BANDICUT BLINKED, CATCHING his breath, and realized that the gases were streaming away into nothingness, and he was standing in a small chamber, shivering from a sudden draft. He was directly under an air vent. As he stepped away, he felt a thudding boom.
/// Explosions? The boojum? ///
Bandicut grunted and said to Ik. "I hope we haven't just been moved into the line of fire."
Ik grumbled wordlessly, looking around.
Tap tap. "Cap'n, I don't know where we are, but I sense seismic disturbances," Copernicus reported. "And could you please untie Napoleon? His kicking is beginning to interfere with my sensor-array."
Kicking? On Copernicus's back, Napoleon was twitching energetically, restrained by Ik's rope. "Nappy!" Bandicut cried. "Can you hear me? Nappy? Can you stop kicking? Stop kicking!"
With a metallic groan, the robot ceased its movements. Ik quickly removed his rope, and Napoleon lurched and slid off Copernicus's back with a crash, along with Bandicut's backpack. "Napoleon, are you all right?" Bandicut cried, catching the robot too late. He felt a brief tingle as Charlie tried to probe through the finger-on-metal contact. He felt a momentary rush of confusion.
Napoleon sat up and swiveled, focusing his sensors. "John Bandicut!" he rasped. "Danger! Tornado!"
"Nappy, the tornado's gone! You've been out of commission, buddy. I'm glad you're back." /But what a time to wake up!/ Bandicut looked up at Ik, who had turned away from the reunion to examine the chamber they had landed in. It was clear he was frantically worried about Li-Jared.
/// I believe that Napoleon
is still engaged in internal programming repair.
If I had time, I might try to help. ///
"I am—" click "—disoriented," Napoleon said, turning with a jerk to look at Copernicus. "We are all still here?"
"Yes, we're all here," said Bandicut, his voice shaking with conflicting emotions. Ik had just touched a control panel, and a huge door slid open to reveal a chamber that looked awfully like an airlock. Its walls were lined with puzzling-looking pieces of hardware. "But I have a feeling we might be going somewhere else real soon." Bandicut grabbed his backpack off the floor and replaced it on Copernicus's back. Copernicus closed a gripper to secure it.
"Indeed, John Bandicut." Ik strode back to join them, wrinkling his bony, blue-skinned brow. His eyes flashed. "I believe Hroom sent us here so that we could make use of this equipment. We must pursue Li-Jared."
"Pursue him where?" Bandicut asked. His breath went out as a huge window blinked open in the wall, revealing distant star clusters—and the half-demolished structure that they had seen in Hroom's vision, stretching diagonally across the view. Clouds of debris were still billowing outward from the explosions.
Ik's gaze was intense. "We must follow him out there. I see no other way."
Bandicut opened his mouth. What am I doing here? he wanted to say. Why me? Am I going to get killed following Li-Jared? But no words came out. He wasn't about to leave Ik, and he knew it. Besides, he thought, Li-Jared might have important information, information that could help him, too.
/// Interesting rationalization.
But there's no question, this looks risky.
Why don't we review Hroom's map
and see if there's another way around. ///
/Hroom's map was incomprehensible./
/// Let's take another look, anyway. ///
A small window opened in Bandicut's mind, displaying a memory-reproduction of the map. It was even less decipherable to him than before, a dense spiderweb of lines filling a space that was itself highly irregular in shape.
/// I'll need to study it. ///
/Can you do it fast?/ Bandicut cleared his throat. "Ik! My friend Charlie—" he tapped his temple "—thinks we might be able to find a safer way around. To meet Li-Jared."
"Didn't you see the map?" Ik strode into the airlock and began inspecting the equipment.
"Huh?"
"Hroom doesn't know where the connector ends! There is a great bend in the layout of the metaworld. It is not exactly . . . well. It is hard to explain. If we had more time, perhaps we could learn another way. But what's the good of transporting through many—" rasp "—worlds/continents/environments to meet Li-Jared, if he is destroyed by the boojum in between?"
Bandicut stared at him. "You got all that from that map?"
/// I think he might be right, John. ///
Ik gestured toward the bridge extending out into space. "This is an uninhabited power-connector. It is out of the shadow-people's range, and there is no one else who can intervene." Bandicut swallowed, remembering the plasma tube that had nearly shortened their lives, back at the factory. Ik peered at him, clearly understanding what he was thinking. "There may be danger. But I do not believe that this is of the same order as the factory plasma tube. It may even be inactive. And remember—the boojum, too, may be distracted. It is dangerous, but not all-powerful." Ik's face drew taut in a fashion that Bandicut interpreted as determination, as he turned back to the hardware. "In any case, we will be suited, and that will give us some protection."
Bandicut drew a ragged breath. /Charlie, is this crazy? I need help here./
/// Do we want to try to save Li-Jared? ///
/Yes, but—/
/// You made out okay saving the shadow-people,
didn't you? ///
/Well, yeah, but—/
/// There are no guarantees, of course. ///
"Cap'n, my power levels are sufficient," said Copernicus, rolling close to him. "Napoleon is less certain. It appears his repair was interrupted by the emergency. We believe he is recharged, but his programming appears to be suffering from disequilibrium. It may take time for him to regain full function. But I can carry him again, if need be." Which sounded to Bandicut like an offer to volunteer.
Bandicut stared at Napoleon, who was teetering toward them. His walk improved visibly even as he crossed the airlock floor. "John Bandicut, I can convey myself," Napoleon rasped. His head jerked to one side, and he slowly rotated it back to peer at Bandicut. "If you give me instructions."
/What do you think?/
/// Well, I just hope— ///
Charlie seemed to measure his words.
/// —that this disequilibrium doesn't
cause . . . problems. ///
"I remember that one," Napoleon said, staring at the Hraachee'an.
"Ik," Bandicut said.
"Ik. We are following . . . assisting him."
"Yes."
Ik, paying no apparent attention, lifted a silver unit that looked rather like an enormous metal crab. "I believe this may fit you, John Bandicut. If you wish to continue with me."
Bandicut sighed. He took the unit gingerly, startled by its light weight. It was clearly made of some exotic metal. "Okay," he said at last. "What do I do?"
"Open it. Climb inside." Ik was already inspecting the other units.
Bandicut searched in vain for a latch. On an impulse, he pressed his left wrist to the suit. The front popped open. He peered inside. It had a featureless, velvety interior, dull black.
"For your robots." Ik handed over two similar suits, one longer, one fatter.
"I don't know about the robots," Bandicut said doubtfully. "I don't know what they'll be capable of, out there. But I don't think they'll need suits."
"Not even for communication? For propulsion?" Ik opened the suit he had picked for himself.
Good point, Bandicut thought. He supposed there was no harm in checking it out. He used his wrist stone, and the fatter carapace snicked open. He lifted it over Copernicus. It closed with a quicksilver ripple, then changed shape to a crablike version of Copernicus—really, more like a crab crossed with a submarine. From somewhere inside the shell, Bandicut imagined he heard a tap tap. "Coppy?" No answer. But then, he wasn't in the commlink yet himself.
He turned to Napoleon. "Can you back into this thing?" Napoleon staggered a little, but complied. Bandicut closed the suit, and it underwent a similar transformation. He slapped its shoulder, and the encased robot raised a hand in salute. Bandicut turned and saw Ik flashing like a chrome man inside his suit, making a gesture that undoubtedly meant, Hurry up! Bandicut backed into his own.
The blackness of the velvet deepened to midnight, and for an instant, he felt that he was stepping into a bottomless hole. The front closed on him, blinding him. His breath caught: he was sealed in a coffin, no way out, couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't move—
/// Hold on! ///
The front of the suit blinked into transparency, and he felt the entire structure of the suit mold itself around him. He peered down the inside lining, and all that he could see was a smooth gray surface where the velvet had been. He saw no controls, but he could breathe okay.
"HRAAAHH—HURRY!!!"
The blast in his ear nearly deafened him. /How do you turn down—?/
Ik's voice continued, more softly, "I am going to—" rasp "—depressurize. Are you ready?"
"Wait! Napoleon, you there? You okay?"
"Affirmative, John Bandicut. Controls functional."
Bandicut blinked. "Coppy?"
"Roger."
The shimmering Ik strode to the end of the airlock. A moment later, Bandicut imagined that he heard a faint hiss of air leaving the airlock. Then the airlock irised open to black space. Uh—he thought, and realized that he was floating. He turned his head, and wondered how to rotate his body. At the thought, his wrist tingled, and he turned. The robots floated into view. "With you, Cap'n." "Ready for flight, John Bandicut."
"I'll be damned," he muttered, as the robots jetted alongside him out the portal to where Ik was floating in space. Bandicut's heart nearly stopped as he saw a darkness full of dim, tiny galaxies, and then as he turned, the spiral ocean of the Milky Way glowing palely but majestically, like the light of some mystical eternal city. He held back a cry of pain. As long as he'd been sealed inside the shipworld, it had been possible to forget, at least for a little while, how unimaginably far from home he was. But out here, floating in the void beyond . . . he felt as if the light of the galaxy would sear a permanent scar, an imprint upon his soul.
He forced himself to turn from the ghostly light, and he joined Ik and the robots, moving toward the power-connector that arrowed out into the darkness beyond, its tiny marker lights dwindling as though into an undersea gloom. That was where Li-Jared had fled, into that emptiness. Puffs of dust were still drifting outward like tenuous smoke rings from the structure.
"The boojum must have caused great damage when it pursued him," Ik said. "It must have caused power nodes to overload."
And will it do the same thing, chasing us? Bandicut wondered. He tried to focus on the structure of the connector itself. In width, it was almost human in scale, probably no more than a kilometer or two across. It looked rather like an enormous truss bridge, a half-open tube that might have provided a pathway for vehicles as well as power. It was constructed of geodesic segments and arcs and straight lengths of various materials, some of which looked like metal and others like glass. The direction of Li-Jared's flight was marked by blasted-out sections, leading away into the darkness.
Bandicut saw one marker light moving against the night, and for an instant, he thought he had spotted the fleeing Li-Jared. /Charlie, do you see that?/
/// Yes, but— ///
Bandicut suddenly realized that the light was on a moving vessel, a spaceship—not on or even near the bridge, but at a considerable distance beyond it. He shivered, as the momentary flurry of hope evaporated, leaving him with a feeling of lonely solitude.
/// I'm sorry.
Chances are, that ship has nothing to do with us.
This world appears to have many cultures,
many peoples
passing in the night without notice. ///
Bandicut wanted to say something like, Why can't we call for help? But he couldn't find the words, and the vessel's light soon passed out of sight.
He shook his head, and flanked by the robots, followed Ik through a gaping hole into the long structure itself. On the inside, it was an open shaft of impressive proportions—much larger seeming than from the outside. He had a sudden feeling of vertigo. If they flew down the inside of that shaft, it would be like falling out of control down an incredible mineshaft of winking lights, and glass, and twisted girders.
"I see no other way for him to have gone," Ik murmured. And with that, the propulsion unit on Ik's back flickered, and he shot away down the power-connector.
Bandicut nearly choked as Ik dwindled in the distance. Wait! he wanted to cry. And then: I'm coming! He felt a slight pressure against the back of his suit, and was aware of incredible acceleration, mostly in the form of the sudden blurring of the shaft around him. The silvery glint of Ik stopped dwindling, and began to grow again as Bandicut closed the gap. He glanced nervously to both sides. The two robots were still flanking him.
There was plenty of clearance all around, but he still felt the threat of impending vertigo and loss of control. He tried not to look straight ahead, but angled his gaze sideways along the shaft's inner walls. There was some illumination from maintenance lights, and in that intermittent glow, the occasional blown-out sections gave an extrasurreal quality to the place. In one glance to the right, he saw a cloud of twinkling particles. Bits of demolished glass? Despite the damage, long stretches of the shaft glimmered and glowed; it was by no means dead.
As if to demonstrate the point, a pulse of dazzling actinic light blossomed out of the distance ahead, flared around him, and vanished behind him. It was followed by another—and another—leaving him breathless.
/Have we just become targets here?/ he wondered, when he was able to think again.
/// I'm not sure,
but I think that was normal activity.
If the boojum were trying to target us,
it probably could. ///
/Mm,/ he muttered. He drew alongside Ik and said, "Who built this thing, anyway? And what's it supposed to do? It's incredible."
"When I have the answers to that, I will have satisfied one of my goals, John Bandicut."
/Do you know, Charlie?/
/// Count me with Ik. ///
He grunted, dissatisfied. "Then, do you know why the boojum is doing this? Why it's trying to kill Li-Jared? And destroying all this property?"
"I cannot say for sure. But I suspect that Li-Jared has gained knowledge that the boojum does not wish him to have. Knowledge, after all, was his goal. Our goal."
Bandicut swallowed, thinking about all of their talk about seeking knowledge of this world. He peered to his left, at the silvery carapace that hid Ik's face, and imagined that Ik was peering back at him.
"John Bandicut, I wish I knew more. But I know this: that the boojum seeks control—and seeks to destroy those who oppose it. And I know also, that there are many who oppose it."
"Many? You mean, like, the builders? Or the people who run the place?"
"Well, yes—the masters of Shipworld oppose it, I believe. But also others."
Bandicut squinted. They zoomed through an enormous arch, where a massive junction of some kind had been blown apart. The effect was so silent that it almost felt like a scene of ancient destruction, undisturbed for eons. And yet, this had probably happened within the hour. /It's like a war,/ he thought, torn between fear and wonder.
/// I think I'm starting to understand
something that Hroom tried to convey to me. ///
/What's that?/
/// I believe it is a war.
A struggle for domination, anyway.
And most of those who live in Shipworld
are innocent of the struggle.
They don't know the sides,
or even that there is a conflict.
And yet, many of them may suffer for it. ///
Bandicut shifted his head right and left, trying to make sense of a long series of strange geometric shapes. They flashed past an arcing electrical discharge. /Except for the shadow-people, I've hardly even seen anyone living here. Where are they all?/
/// Ik noted that, too, remember.
I think it's a question of where we were.
My impression, from Hroom,
is that there are peoples who have either died
because of massive systems failures,
or been forced to move
to new living areas. ///
/War refugees?/ He looked left, then right, and suddenly realized that the robots were no longer in formation with him. /Oh, mokin' hell. Charlie, have you seen—?/ He broke off the question, turning as far as he could without spinning the suit. "Ik, is there some way to look behind in these suits?" He tried to keep panic out of his voice. "I've lost sight of the robots!"
"It should give you a mirror view if you ask for it. I do not see the robots, either."
"Damn! I've got to slow down. I may have to go back."
"Wait—testing long-range scanners. Gaiii! Why didn't I think of them before?"
Bandicut's heart was pounding. "How do you turn it on? Do you see—?"
"I could have been searching for Li-Jared."
Damn it, forget Li-Jared for a moment! Bandicut swallowed and croaked silently, /Translators, can you get me long-range scanning, to the rear? I'm looking for the two robots./
The view ahead shrank to a dot. A new view exploded, the rear view. He shuddered, his stomach lurching as he experienced a sudden sensation of flying backward, as fast as he'd been flying forward. He strained to focus on the receding landscape. /Can you scan for a target?/
*Specify modality.*
/How would I know? Radar, infrared—whatever the hell you've got! Can you isolate the two robots?/
The image blinked and shifted, changing color, then cycling rapidly through a dozen different false-color views and changes in magnification. Suddenly it froze. The image was dark red, and grainy with magnification. In its center was a grotesque-looking crab shape. Copernicus, in his suit. And he was zigzagging back and forth across the image, back and forth across the shaft. Where the hell was Napoleon?
"Coppy!" Bandicut shouted. "Can you read me, Coppy?" /Translator, how far back is that? Can you slow me, turn me around to go back?/
/// Can I help, John? ///
/Yes! Talk to it!/
/// Okay, Copernicus is about
eighty kilometers behind us.
We are modifying your flight path.
Slowing. ///
/Don't lose Ik!/
/// Maintaining fix on Ik.
He is slowing, too, but not as fast. ///
"Ik!" he called. "Coppy's fallen way back! I don't see Napoleon. I've got to go look for them."
"Quickly, then! I have a fix on distant activity. Explosions, I believe! It could be Li-Jared. I dare not delay!"
Bandicut chafed, desperately wanting not to be separated from either the robots or the Hraachee'an. "Okay, Ik! Coppy! Can you read me?"
In the image, he saw the silvery crab of a robot swerve sharply one way, then another—left, right, up, down. A narrow scale on the right of the image, which he realized was a range indicator, jumped; then he felt a surge, and the indicator began to close again. Coppy had decelerated suddenly, and Bandicut's suit had responded by slowing in kind. "Coppy-y-y-y!" he yelled.
In answer he heard a rasp of static, and finally a voice, through the static. "Cap'n, have lost contact with Napoleon. Search pattern no good . . . may need assistance . . ." His words after that were lost in static.
Bandicut cursed. /Charlie, can we turn around? And keep the lock on Ik?/
/// Turning.
I'll try to keep that lock,
but I can't promise. ///
Bandicut felt a slight but dizzying surge, and saw a flicker in the image. He was rotating to face the other way. "Ik! I'll try to rejoin you as soon as I can!" He felt a knot in his stomach, and realized just how badly he did not want to leave one friend for another. /All right, Charlie—pour it on!/
The image blurred with speed, then slowed again. For a moment, the suit seemed to lose the fix on Copernicus. Then it focused again, and the image was much clearer, and the range indicator had narrowed drastically.
/// Here's zero magnification. ///
Copernicus was a small but growing silver spot in the distance. /Can you scan for Napoleon?/
/// Trying. ///
"Coppy, what was your last contact with Napoleon?"
The voice was clearer this time. "Cap'n, he veered to map the structure on the left while I mapped the structure on the right. We lost contact two minutes and thirty-seven seconds ago."
Bandicut thought of the speed they were travelling, and Napoleon's difficulties in movement after reawakening. He never should have let Napoleon fly solo! "Did he—he didn't crash, did he?"
"I saw no such indication."
"Then do you think he's—?" Bandicut's voice suddenly caught, as he realized he didn't know what he was thinking. Lost control? Gone amok?
"Cap'n, he appeared to be flying without difficulty. Until I said something that seemed to disturb him."
Bandicut blinked as the robot came alongside. "What do you mean?"
"I expressed concern that we could be acting on misleading information."
"What?"
"Supposition, Cap'n. I thought it a logical possibility that we could be pursuing a phantom—or flying into a trap. How do we know that the shadow-people's information was accurate? Or our own scanner images? What do we know of these systems, after all?"
Bandicut felt his pulse race. "Coppy, if you had some basis for thinking that, why didn't you say it before?" He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. He peered around at this empty, but living, power shaft—knowing that he had no idea where he was, or what his options might be if Coppy was right. Ik was out of sight now. "Ik!" he cried out. "Can you still hear me?"
"Hrrrm . . ." came a distant, staticky response.
"We began mapping to gather data," Copernicus continued. "I did not see Napoleon depart from formation. But following one of my turns, he was gone."
Damn! Bandicut thought. He swiveled hard left, then right, scanning the mystifying structure of metal and glass and God knew what else, searching for any sign at all of Napoleon. He could be hundreds of kilometers from here by now. "Coppy, I don't even know how to search for him. We can't search the whole damn structure!"
/// Try calling to him. ///
/What? Hasn't Copernicus been trying?/
/// Can it hurt to try? ///
Bandicut shrugged. "Napoleon!" he shouted. "Nappy, can you hear me? Nappyyyyy!" He rotated through a full three hundred sixty degrees, searching.
To his astonishment, he was answered by a sharp rasp of static. He glimpsed movement, and jerked himself in a quick turn. A second silver crab, this one elongated, flew out from the jumbled landscape of the shaft wall, and darted toward him. "Nappy!"
Copernicus shot out to meet the other robot, but Napoleon flew in quick, evasive maneuvers around Copernicus and darted close to Bandicut.
Rasp. "John Bandicut, danger—danger!" screeched the metal voice of Napoleon. "Protect me from that machine!"
"What machine?" Bandicut searched frantically for an enemy, perhaps some berserk machine controlled by the boojum.
"That one!" Napoleon cried. "It's trying to harm me, trying to contaminate my programming! Protect me from Copernicus!"
Bandicut stared, dumbfounded, then whirled to see Copernicus fleeing into the cover from which Napoleon had just emerged.