/// Are you okay? ///
/I think so. That first step was a bitch./ Bandicut was staring up at an iridescent ceiling, which flickered with moire patterns that made his eyes pulse. Ceiling? They were indoors? He pushed himself painfully to a sitting position. Indeed, they were in a room of some sort, about the size of a typical human-scale classroom. There was no furniture, but a glassy-smooth floor and some sloped consoles along one wall. All the surfaces—ceiling, walls, floor—shone with a pearly iridescence.
Ik turned toward him from a silvery window in the far wall. "Are you all right? I believe we may be near a control center."
"Good." Bandicut closed his eyes against the shimmering patterns, then opened them to look for a door in the room. He could see none, nor any sign of the portal that had put them here.
"The door has closed," Ik remarked, rubbing his chest. "John Bandicut, your robot looks rather unwell."
"Nappy!" Bandicut scrambled to examine Napoleon, sprawled on the glassy floor.
Copernicus was there, poking at his partner with a probe. "Cap'n, Napoleon is not functioning."
"The tornado must have broken something," Bandicut said. "Shorted out his power supply, maybe. Can you tell anything from the diagnostics?"
The robot clicked. "I am unable to establish a diagnostic link. I can offer no information." Copernicus backed off a short distance.
Grunting, Bandicut opened the only access port he could find that didn't require special tools, a square panel on Napoleon's back. He peered inside, but found nothing. With a sigh, he snapped the panel shut. "I don't know. I hate to say it, Coppy, but we might have to leave him behind. I don't know what else to do. I'm sorry."
Copernicus drumtapped haltingly.
/// I can't help noticing.
"Him"? Napoleon? ///
/Well, he feels like a person to me. I feel as if I'm abandoning him. Killing him, if he's not already dead./
Bandicut left Napoleon and walked over to the window Ik had been looking through. It appeared opaque to him, but he did see his own reflection, and the face he saw shocked him. He had left Neptune Explorer—what, less than two days ago, though it seemed much longer. The eyes peering back at him seemed much older. Were they wiser, or just tired and scared? He didn't know. They were the eyes of a poor sap cut off from everything he'd ever known, flung across the galaxy and left for dead, inhabited by an alien mind, altered by alien technologies, with an alien for a friend. What the hell was he supposed to think? Except that it was lonely here. Damned lonely . . .
/// It sounds depressing
when you think of it that way. ///
/It is depressing, Charlie. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't even know who my robots are./ Staring at his reflection, he realized something else. He hadn't grown any stubble since leaving the ship. Had the "normalization" stopped his beard growth?
/// It's possible. If the
system noticed your efforts at trimming,
it might have judged that you desired your beard
inactivated. ///
Bandicut grunted in annoyance. /They could have asked me first./ He sighed and returned to Napoleon. His heart ached at the thought of leaving the robot behind. But there was really no point in dragging him any farther. Was there?
"John Bandicut, it is possible we might find places to recharge or—" rasp "—rejuvenate your robot."
Bandicut looked up in surprise. "You think so? I don't know what's wrong with him. It might be more serious than just needing a recharge." /Charlie, I just thought of something. Could your translator-stones do anything for him?/
/// Perhaps. Not directly,
I don't think.
But if we could get him to a place
where the stones could intercede . . . ///
/You mean, like, communicate with a repair service?/
/// Something like that. ///
Ik was speaking, and it took him a second to catch up. "I cannot . . . brrrik-k-k . . . be certain. But if it is important to you, can you carry the robot?"
Bandicut pursed his lips. "Not very far. Coppy! Could you carry Napoleon, if I strapped him onto your back?"
Copernicus drumtapped. "Certainly, Cap'n."
"What's your power status?"
"Seventy-two percent, including reserves."
"Good. Come here." Bandicut lifted Napoleon and draped him awkwardly over Copernicus's back. Copernicus clicked and whirred, trying to hold the other robot in place with two of his gripper arms, but he couldn't quite manage. Bandicut looked up to see Ik holding out his coiled rope. He took it gratefully. As he wound the rope around the two robots, he suddenly peered into Coppy's sensor-eyes. "You gave me your power level differently this time."
"Cap'n?"
"You said, seventy-two percent including reserves."
"Yes, Cap'n."
"Mind if I ask why?"
"Well, I—wished to sound optimistic, Cap'n."
Bandicut blinked. "Optimistic?"
"Sixty-seven percent, plus reserves, would not have sounded as encouraging. Cap'n."
Bandicut stared at the machine.
"Is that acceptable?" said Copernicus.
"Yeah," he said slowly. "Just as long as we're clear on what we're telling each other." He rose. /I guess./
"I should tell you," said Ik. "I do not immediately see how we are going to leave this room."
"Ah. Do you know where we are?"
"Not precisely, no. I must take time to examine these consoles. Perhaps you should rest. We may yet have a long way to travel."
Bandicut was, in fact, exhausted. He shuffled around for a moment, circling like a dog preparing to lie down, and finally stretched out on the hard, glassy floor. He was surprised to feel it give a little, under his weight. Before he could think about it much, he was asleep.
*
Ik did not rest immediately. He studied the consoles for a while, before concluding that he could do nothing without the correct access protocols. But he recognized the consoles' type, and thought he knew in very general terms where they were now, which was something, at least. He believed they had traveled a considerable distance from the tornado plain; but he did not think they had left the continent.
Was Li-Jared still ahead of them? That was the question. Ik had discovered no sign of his presence here. But Ik imagined that after watching that tornado dive upon him, Li-Jared would have been reluctant to linger in any one place without some assurance of safety. So even if he had been here, he probably had moved on at once.
Which meant that he must have found the way out of this room. Ik, for the moment, was stymied on that count; but he wasn't unduly worried. Either the portal would reappear and take them to another location, or they would find a way to the other side of this window. He couldn't see much through it—the pane seemed to pass only a narrow wavelength band—but it did look like a corridor of some kind beyond. Where there was a corridor, there should be civilized activity not too far off. Ik made a slow circuit of the room, lightly touching the walls with his fingertips. He felt no response, no tickle, from his voice-stones. If there was anything here for them to connect to, it was apparently inactive. Very well, then—if he could not pursue Li-Jared, he would use the time to collect his thoughts.
There was much that he did not understand here, but he did have a kind of faith about things, based on his experience. He and Li-Jared had been separated and reunited several times in the two turns of seasons they had been friends. It was as if they were caught up by eddies curling around a great invisible whirlpool, and drawn back, time and again, to help each other in times of need. Was it random chance, or intentional manipulation? Ik couldn't say for sure, though he had his suspicions. But one thing he was sure of was that someone wanted something from Li-Jared and him. And now apparently from John Bandicut, as well. What that something was, he didn't know.
Several times he and Li-Jared, who in the beginning had had nothing visibly in common except their stones and their status as exiles, had found themselves plunged together into circumstances of dire need—not their own but someone else's. They had never been able to say no to the need—and their presence had always made a difference, to someone. But quite apart from the sense that his life was no longer entirely his own, Ik had often felt that something else was missing from the picture; something was incomplete in the way he and Li-Jared struggled to find their way here. He felt, certainly, an infuriating sense of ignorance about their role in this world, and the identity of those who determined it. But now he wondered: was John Bandicut a missing piece of their destiny on Shipworld, someone they had not known they needed until he arrived?
Ik sat crosslegged on the floor, and studied Bandicut. The human was stretched out flat, in a deep meditative trance. It was apparent that Bandicut and Ik had knowledge and skills to offer one another, though the role of those metal creatures was less clear. Ik rather liked his excitable human companion, but he could not help wondering: did Bandicut have even the slightest inkling of what he had gotten himself into, by joining with Ik? The complexity and uncertainty, the frustration, the risk?
Probably not. And perhaps that was just as well. It was not as if Bandicut would be better off alone. Ik rubbed his fingertips on his chest and murmured softly to himself. These questions could not be resolved now. And it was time he, too, took some meditative rest.
*
Something startled Bandicut awake: a dream about walking . . . through duststorms and whirlwinds, with voices chittering at him to walk faster, faster . . .
He blinked awake and sat up, wincing. He had a painful stiffness in his back. Ik was sitting nearby, eyes closed. It took Bandicut a moment to remember where he was; and when it all came back to him, he didn't feel a lot better. They were in a room, somewhere. Trapped. And he needed a bathroom. Badly. He wondered what people used for bathrooms around here.
/// Let me pose the question to the stones.
In the meantime, I believe you've been given
greater endurance in that area. ///
/Swell./ He got up and walked the perimeter of the room, running his hand along the wall. At the beginning of the third wall, he was startled when a large oval dematerialized, revealing a cubicle beyond. /What's this?/
/// Um, I think it's a bathroom. ///
He stared suspiciously into the enclosure. Finally he stepped cautiously inside, and glanced back at once. The opening was obscured by a shimmering translucency. /So where's the—you know, plumbing?/
/// Turn around. ///
He did, and saw a haze of light dancing around him, with sparkles and swirls. After a moment, he felt a certain kind of relief. Then the lights faded. Was it measuring him for a custom-made commode?
/// Uh, John? ///
/Yeah?/
/// Do you still have to go? ///
He blinked. /Oh. I get it, you mean we're done?/
/// Pretty good system, huh?
I mean, when you have who knows how many
different species to service. ///
He gaped around in amazement. /Uh, yeah, I guess. As long as they don't take the wrong thing out. If you know what I mean./ He stepped out of the cubicle, and found Ik waiting. "Your turn," he said wryly.
"Hraah."
While he waited for Ik, Bandicut took a bite from his carbonut bar and swallowed some water from his bottle. Then he stood at the window and cupped his eyes to the silvery surface. He could make out vague geometric forms of light, but not much more. As he pressed his hands to the pane, his wrists touched the glass. It suddenly turned opaque. But beside it stood an open rectangular doorway. Surprised, he leaned through the door. A wide corridor of shimmering light stretched away as far as the eye could see. The doorway was located at the elbow of a sharp bend in the corridor. "Whoa!"
"You have found the way out!" Ik exclaimed, emerging from the bathroom.
"I guess so." Bandicut pulled his head back in. "But the way out to where?"
Ik stepped into the doorway to look. "I do not know. But if Li-Jared was here, then he most likely went out this way. And we must follow."
"Yeah. But Ik? What if he didn't come this way?"
Ik clacked his mouth. "Because of the changes in the portal? That is possible. But in that case, I know no other way to follow him, except to press onward. But recall your own belief that the meerkats were guiding us."
Bandicut remembered, and felt a sudden weight of responsibility. They didn't really know what the meerkats had in mind. He had trusted them, but purely by instinct.
Ik was gazing at him, eyes gleaming, perhaps guessing his thoughts. "John Bandicut, you should know—there is something about this world that—" Rasp. Rasp. He seemed to struggle with his thoughts. "Something that brings people together in unexpected ways. Eddies, or—" rasp "—turbulence. I cannot explain it. But—"
Bandicut stared at him, remembering the chaos calculators of the translator back on Triton, which had worked their way through seemingly infinitely complex calculations to find the cometary danger to Earth—and in consequence, had brought him here. Had all that happened by coincidence?
"Li-Jared and I have been separated before. But we have always found our way back together. Despite the very great magnitude of this world." Ik's eyes closed, and opened again, like some great lizard's.
"Then I guess we should go this way," Bandicut agreed. He decided not to mention the coincidence that had brought Ik along to Bandicut and his robots just when he was needed.
/// Mm. Indeed. ///
"Very well. Are you ready?"
Bandicut hoisted his backpack onto Copernicus, and secured it along with the other robot. "Can you carry all this?"
Copernicus drumtapped and rolled forward to join Ik in the open doorway.
"Have you learned anything at all about this place?" he asked Ik.
"Only that I think I know the type of place that it is." Stepping out into the corridor, Ik peered both ways.
Bandicut felt a rush of amazement as a bright, streaming light washed over him. It was like stepping into a holo special effect, and much brighter than it had seemed from the doorway. Liquid streamers of light rippled along both walls, conveying an impression of endless, high-speed movement around the bend in the corridor. The corridor was oval in cross-section, the walls curving up to an apex, where a darker strip with lighted cross-hatchings ran its length. Bandicut started to feel dizzy. It looked like a long corridor; the ribbons of light seemed to converge toward infinity.
Ik was studying the view in both directions, using his sighting glasses. Bandicut could see little to distinguish the two directions, but Ik murmured, "We can only go—hrrm, one way, if we wish to make any speed."
"Why's that?"
Ik swept his hand to the right. "It's a one-way transport field. There is probably another, somewhere, going the other way."
It was not just an optical illusion, then. Bandicut wondered if they ought to be on the lookout for speeding vehicles. Were they at risk, as pedestrians?
"I do not believe Li-Jared would have set out against the direction of flow, unless he had a specific reason."
"You think he was here, then?"
"I cannot be sure." Ik rubbed his chest. "But this looks like the sort of transport that might take us to . . . a control unit. He would expect me to look for him in such a place." Ik handed the binoculars to Bandicut.
He peered through the lenses, and found them perfectly focused down the streaming, psychedelic sightline of the corridor. He felt the magnification click up, and up, and up—each time revealing a dimmer and more distant stretch of the corridor—until, at last, it centered on a cluster of tiny, flickering, sparks of light very far down the corridor. Despite the distance, he imagined an intensity in the pulsations and color changes in the sparks.
/// That view!
It reminds me of something! ///
The quarx sounded breathless. With fear? Or excitement?
/Is it something that I ought to know about?/
/// I don't know.
I feel a great . . . pull toward it.
I want to go that way. ///
/Um./ He asked Ik, "What is that, way down there?"
"I cannot say for sure. But there is activity, at least. I think it wise to proceed that way."
Bandicut handed the binoculars back. "We're with you."
Ik snapped the binocs shut and tucked them away in his belt. Then he stood at the righthand edge of the corridor. He hrrm'd for a moment, brushing his fingers along the wall. His fingertips disappeared into the ripples of light, scattering silvery sparks into the light-slipstream. "Put your hand here."
Bandicut hesitated, his hand half extended.
/// Are you afraid of it? ///
/Mokin' foke. I don't want to be electrocuted./
/// It's safe, I think. ///
/You think./ Bandicut followed Ik's example, and felt a tingle.
"And—touch the robot."
"Coppy?" When the robot rolled closer, he put his other hand on top of its metal shell. A moment later, Copernicus extended a manipulator arm into the lightstream.
"Now . . . think about . . . traveling down the corridor." Ik turned and faced downstream.
"What do you—?" Bandicut began, but didn't finish, because the floor beneath him began flowing like a pool of molten mercury, and he was gliding silently forward, as if on skates. "Uh—" He looked up from his feet and was stunned to see Ik a considerable distance ahead of him, accelerating down the corridor. "Coppy?" he called, glancing over his shoulder. The robot was gliding right behind him. "Oh-kaaay." With the flicker of a wish, he felt himself speeding up, with no sensation of friction, to keep pace with Ik.
The crosshatchings in the ceiling flickered, then blurred with acceleration.
*
The corridor was a lot longer than he had guessed, even peering through the binocs. Judging by their apparent speed, it must have been hundreds of kilometers long. Periodically the streamers of light split apart like vertically-separated rail spurs, bracketing long stretches of window between them. The windows were darkened, but he caught glimpses through them of arcs of light and shadow. It gave him a sense of great, machinelike shapes and blazing discharges of energy, as though he were speeding along the overlook of a vast, mysterious factory.
Perhaps they were. Ik, alongside him, remarked, "There are many such sectors in this—" rasp "—continent. It is a very large place, and there is much to be constructed and maintained."
"Do you have any idea what that is over there?"
"Who knows? A power system? A continent-bridge? A star-spanner? Who can say?" A moment later, Ik leaned back against an invisible support and closed his eyes.
Bandicut stared in disbelief at his friend, snoozing as they flew headlong down the corridor of light. He was hoping for another glimpse of a window; but when none came after a minute or so, he hesitantly leaned back himself, and found that he could float quite comfortably as though in a reclining chair. After a moment, he closed his own eyes. No harm in resting a little, he thought. God knew he was in no danger of falling asleep.
*
He blinked his eyes open with a start. He didn't know what had awakened him, but he felt a tingle in his wrists. Both daughter-stones were flickering visibly.
/// They're recharging themselves
from the transport field. ///
/Oh,/ he thought dazedly. He thought he could see something sparkling ahead.
"Slowing," Ik said.
The cross-hatch blur overhead began to flicker again as they decelerated. The sparkles far ahead were visible to the naked eye now, but hard to gaze at for long. They reminded Bandicut of the tortured view he had once had of the translator back on Triton, and the feeling that the translator had seemed to exist on a different plane of space-time from his own. He recalled thinking that it looked like an atom's eye view of a nuclear reaction. This thing ahead was like that, too.
/// Yes . . . ///
the quarx whispered, transfixed.
As they drew closer, he began to imagine that he saw shapes moving in the display: shadowy upright forms walking in otherworldly, flickering flames. /Shadrach in the fire,/ he muttered suddenly.
/// Say again? ///
/Shadrach in the fire. And—what were their names? I forget. Old Testament story./
/// What's an Old Testament? ///
/The Bible, you know? There's this story about these God-fearing guys who were thrown into a furnace by an evil king, because they wouldn't worship him./
/// Ah. And did they burn up? ///
/No. That was the good part. They walked around without getting a whisker singed. Those shadows up there remind me of the story. I wonder what they are./
/// People, I think. Shadow-people.
John, this is really . . . ///
The quarx sounded lightheaded, faint.
/What, Charlie?/
/// . . .resonating. ///
/Yeah?/ Bandicut squinted. The shadowy figures were becoming starker, and really were starting to look like people. Not human, necessarily, but people. "Ik—?" he started to ask.
"Hrrrm," said the Hraachee'an. "I think we are about to meet the local—" rasp "—maintenance crew."
*
They glided in like a train into a station. Before he knew it, they were surrounded by pulsing lights, and his skin tingled as though he were too close to lightning. Then they were surrounded by the shadow-figures, twitching like jerky animation characters as they floated to a stop. The shadow-people were dark and angular; up close they looked scarcely humanoid at all—more like clusters of fluttering black triangles stuck together like leaves. They looked like a surrealistic holo ad.
"Ik?" Bandicut murmured, "do you know how to talk to them?"
"I will try." Ik turned to two of the shadow-people, his hands opened but held close to his chest.
The shadow-people rustled and made vaguely musical sounds. One of them turned toward the other, and as it turned, showed an almost two dimensional aspect. They nearly vanished when they turned sideways, and Bandicut had the unsettling feeling that something had twisted dimensionally in his plane of sight. Almost as if they were . . .
/// Fractionally dimensional.
Yes, ///
Charlie whispered.
/Ah./
Ik said something that Bandicut didn't catch. The rasp of his stones indicated that they hadn't quite caught it, either.
The two shadow-people turned and twisted, and said something that sounded like a violin being tuned. Wheee-whooo. They seemed to quiver and almost contract out of existence, then expand again.
Ik said something else. Rasp.
The stones were trying, but getting nowhere.
It was unclear whether the shadow-people were understanding his words. After a moment, they swiveled and nearly vanished, then reappeared and sort of slid down the corridor a short distance toward a cluster of more shadow-people. Ik gestured to Bandicut with a sweep of his hand. They followed the shadow-people, Copernicus whirring behind.
/You said this was—resonating, Charlie?/
/// Yes, ///
the quarx said dreamily.
/What's it remind you of?/
He felt the quarx struggling to gather memories, powerful memories. They were too blurred for him to understand.
/// It's the kind of people they are.
John, they're fractal beings.
Like me. ///
Charlie spoke with a startling wistfulness.
Bandicut blinked and shivered, despite himself. /They spook the hell out of me. I wonder if we affect them the same way./
/// They seem spooked by something.
But I wonder if it's us. ///
Ik was approaching the cluster of shadow-people, with Bandicut about four steps behind. Ik started to say something, but was interrupted by a sound of violins being struck in sharp ascending notes. Whreeek! Whreeek! Whreeek! Black triangles twisted and waved in agitation.
"Ik—what is it?" Bandicut realized he was hanging back a little, and wasn't sure if it was out of deference or fear.
Rasp. R-rasp. "Not . . . trouble . . . meaning." He caught a halting rendition of Ik's voice, apparently directed not at Bandicut but at the shadow-people. Bandicut suddenly understood something: his comprehension of Ik's speech was aided not just by his own stones, but by a link with Ik's stones. And right now, Ik's stones were busy trying to talk to the shadow-people.
Whatever Ik had said, it didn't seem to make the shadow-people happy. They came back with more violin shrieks, and one of them fluttered toward Ik. The Hraachee'an backpedaled hastily.
Bandicut ducked out of the way, wondering what the hell was going on.
Rasp. Rasp.
Whreeek! Whreeek! Whreeek!
Ik raised his arms, waving them across each other. "No— no—didn't—" He was trying to dissuade them of something, but wasn't succeeding. The shadow-people fluttered their triangles, and one of them, who seemed taller and more sharply angular than the others, floated toward Ik. It swept an arm of triangles at Ik, and the Hraachee'an tumbled backward to the floor.
That was enough for Bandicut. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" he yelled, ducking away from the shadow-person's reach. The being paused, and drew back a meter or so. Furious, Bandicut crouched beside his friend. Ik looked stunned, but unharmed.
/// They seem angry about something.
But I can't tell what. ///
Before he could say a word, his thoughts were obliterated by a thundering, crackling, rocket-exhaust sound—followed by a bone-shaking BOOOOOM-M-M!