IK HEARD THE scream and tried to respond. But he was trapped in a thick matrix of incomprehensible datastreams, in a form he could not control at all. He'd understood only some of what he'd seen: John Bandicut moving deep in the icecore, threading in and out through bewildering strands of data, with a facility Ik could only marvel at. He saw other beings approaching Bandicut, the Maksu he thought, and still other discrete forces operating from within the icecore. At first Bandicut's progress had seemed promising—but then somehow it had all gone wrong, and Ik was helpless to intervene. Bandicut was caught, his icelink-presence stretched out in the icecore like a long, twisted shadow.
Ik heard a new voice cry out, and its words drove an icy chill into his heart: "—protect yourself from the boojum!"
Ik strained to move, to reach out to his friend. But he could not help. Li-Jared was equally immobilized. The boojum! They had been so sure that it was not here! It must have reached the ice caverns before them, and lain in wait. If it had penetrated the icecore, they had no hope. Even if they escaped alive, everything they'd hoped to find here would be prey to the boojum. And if it held the ice caverns, what part of Shipworld would be safe?
Had they saved the tank farms only to lose a deadlier battle?
John Bandicut! he tried to cry. But he could not do even that. He shuddered and whispered to his voice-stones, /Is there nothing we can do?/
From his stones there was no answer. But from elsewhere, he felt a quaking in the dataspace, distant at first and then growing to a terrible roar. He watched in horror as John Bandicut's shadowy presence stretched impossibly thin, then unraveled like a breaking rope, and vanished into the depths of the churning icecore.
*
Bandicut fell, and it was like falling into a ring of fire, chased by a rippling darkness.
He was trapped, but he was not powerless, not yet. He used what strength he had to maneuver through the splintering shards of the datastructure. The boojum had somehow altered the virtual space in which it was all held; the translator-stones were buzzing about a "phase-space" shift, and everything was changing: ice crystals fragmenting and spinning by, and connections turning inside out. Still, he was falling and could not stop himself.
But one thing was now obvious: the boojum had been here before him, long before him, maybe from the beginning. Its trap was not new, but was well laid and long ready.
He now understood: the icecore was the boojum's lair.
It was nearly impossible to believe, but even as he fell through the twisting changes in virtual phase-space, he saw the truth. It was the complexity of the ice caverns that made it possible for the boojum to hide, entwined around the very nerves of the icecore and the iceline threads that converged here. Like a virus in an organic body, it had burrowed into the nerve cells of its victim, unseen and unfelt, and so close to the pulse of life that the inner defenses could not root it out without destroying the body itself. Hiding in safety, it had watched and plotted and gathered its strength to strike—here, there, like a cobra—before withdrawing back into the very fiber of its enemy.
But there was no time to reflect. Bandicut darted sideways and down through the virtual connections, pursued by the shadow-fire of the boojum. Down, down: he fled deeper into the shadow's lair. A place of death, but it was the only avenue open to him.
In the fragments spinning away from him, he could see shimmering windows into dataspace, and he knew that the answers he'd come seeking were in there somewhere; and he knew that he would never find them as long as the boojum lived.
The ring of fire billowed inward toward him. He could hardly tell now: was it trying to capture him or kill him?
He cried out with a flinty rage, /You got Charlie, you bastard, but you won't get me!/ And he shot faster down into the icecore.
The fire, rippling with darkness, roared after him.
*
Antares saw Bandicut vanish, but not before reacting to her cry. She had done some good, perhaps. He appeared to be moving to evade the shadow before he vanished. She could make little sense of what was happening. The visible landscape here was churning with metamorphosis, and the only thing she understood with certainty was the smell of danger and fear. Was Bandicut fighting for his life against the boojum, trapped in a pocket somewhere in this murky inner world?
She wished she could do more. She shouted again, with no idea if he could hear her: /JOHN BANDICUT, DON'T SURRENDER TO IT! YOU MUST NOT GIVE IN!/ There was no return echo, just the reverberating throb of danger. But at least she could be a beacon to the fleeing Bandicut; maybe she could show him the way to safety.
As she began to cry out once more, she was startled by a movement of dark, flitting shapes, from somewhere behind her—flying past like dusk-hornets, and on down into the ever-changing confusion. She caught her breath, focused her thoughts, and shouted, /IT'S ANTARES, BANDIE! I'M ON THE OUTSIDE! HOLD ONTO MY PRESENCE! FOLLOW MY VOICE OUT!/ And she let down her own defenses just a little, and strained to make an empathic connection.
*
As he skidded away from the ring of fire, he heard that cry again, as if from another world, leaking through the phase-space boundary. /Follow my voice—!/ he thought he heard. But before he could get a fix on it, he heard another voice—a closer one, it seemed, a familiar one. He shivered involuntarily. Was that Charlie's voice, rippling through the continuum? He could make out no words, just reverberating echoes. /Charlie!/ he shouted. /Charlie!/ In answer, there were only more echoes, fragments of the quarx's voice like bits of glass flying through the maelstrom. Could Charlie be in here somewhere? Had the boojum stolen him, instead of snuffing his life? Or was it parading pieces of him, like a barbarian parading its enemies' heads on pikes?
/Don't surrender!/ cried that first voice, very small and far away. /It's Antares!/
The ring of fire was in pursuit like a rocket. He changed direction, fleeing wherever he could find a path. Antares? Impossible! It was a trick of the boojum, or his imagination. But there it was again: /—must not give in!/
Nor was it just the words; he felt something stronger, an actual breath of encouragement somehow flowing through the fragmented icelink. The ring of fire hesitated for a heartbeat, and that was when he knew the voice was real. In that heartbeat, he managed to put some distance between himself and the boojum.
The connection grew momentarily stronger. /I am on the outside, with your robot. Your friends—/ And then the connection was burned away by the shadow-fire.
But it had cost the boojum something to do that. It wasn't invulnerable, even in its own lair. It was powerful, but not omnipotent.
But he needed allies here! Where were Ik and Li-Jared? Bandicut careened wildly along the icelink, jumping from splinter to splinter, ice spine to ice spine, dizzily aware of data spinning by that he had no time for. /ANTARES!/ he cried at last, desperate to regain that outside connection.
A spine in front of him flashed from white to black, and a shadow leaped toward him. He shot sideways, away. /ANTARES! IK! LI-JARED! CHARLIE! ANYBODY!/
Where was Antares' voice?
Another voice answered, darker and deadlier and much closer.
>> All you see is under our control. You too will soon be a part of us . . . >>
The voice sounded strained . . . distorted. Mad, he thought.
He felt a twisting sensation around him—a new change in the phase-space pocket. Its source seemed to be on the outside. The boojum's fire shifted quickly through changes of frequency and intensity, and for an instant it seemed to flower open and become transparent as it changed form. Bandicut was stunned to glimpse the incredible fluidity of the boojum's inner workings, the intricate structures of self-awareness, and the shockingly dark intensity of its inner being. Malice seemed to pour from it, a madness born of chaos, of intelligence gone dreadfully wrong. It was viper-quick and shrewd, and its intentions were to destroy, to control and destroy. As he glimpsed its soul, if that was what it was, the boojum glimpsed his, and recognized his terror.
And with an abruptness that wrenched at the fabric of the phase-space, it lunged after him.
A curtain of shadow rippled between them. Not the boojum, but something else. Bandicut spun away in fear, but that rippling curtain gave him an instant's interference, and he took it to flee in a new direction. A circlet of fire pursued him, but he dove down yet another sliver of icelink connection.
/Whrreeeeeeekkk! Whrreeeeeeekkk! Whrreeeeeeekkk!/
In astonishment, he saw, erupting out of the icelink like boiling-mad hornets, a swarm of fluttering, angrily shrieking shadows of another kind. And he heard a familiar sound.
/Hrroooooomm-mm-mm-mm! Whreeeek-whreeeek! Wh'rooom'm'm./
A fluttering thing of darkness shot past him, cutting off the boojum's attack. In the shadow-person's wake, a wall of ice-connections crumbled, creating a moat between the shadow-fire and Bandicut. His heart leaped, and he cried, /HROOM! IS THAT YOU?/
He heard a voice distorted and altered by the virtual space, but recognizable. /Whreeek! Huuu-reeeek! . . . John Bandicut . . . opening a phase-space channel . . . prepare to flee . . ./
Prepare to flee?
/Hrreeek! . . . now! . . ./
He was completely disoriented, surrounded by sparkling, fragmented connections. But as Hroom shouted, an erupting flower of darkness rippled open around him. In its center he could see a tiny window back to the maze of the outer icecore.
The hoop of fire darted that way, bellowing:
>> That way lies death . . . death . . . death. You will not survive . . . not survive . . . >>
That was all he needed to hear from the boojum. He shot through the window, mingled shrieks reverberating around him.
*
The shadow-people had flashed by Antares so fast she'd hardly been sure what they were. She had sent the Maksu only minutes before! But the Maksu were a group consciousness, stretched far through the shipworld. They must have gotten word to the shadow-people almost instantly.
She felt a physical disturbance of space shifting around her, and knew that the shadow-people hadn't waited for the streaktrains. They were deep in the ice caverns, and in the virtual link itself, changing parameters with reckless speed. Down in the glittering virtual center of the icecore, a jagged patch of blackness was yawning open.
She saw him tumbling through the blackness and dived toward him, shouting, /THIS WAY OUT, JOHN BANDICUT! THIS WAY OUT!/
*
He cartwheeled free among the glittering spines of the icecore, through a vast snowflake. He was out of the inner core of the boojum-lair; but he was disoriented, dizzy, didn't know where to go from here. Who was with him? Shadow-people? Boojum? Voices reverberated everywhere, bewilderingly. He thought one was Charlie's, but then it was gone, swept away. And then he felt the searching presence of Antares, and he caught onto it in gratitude and desperation.
/This way out! This way!/ she cried.
He fled on her voice, and soon heard another.
/Hraaah! John Bandicut, is it the boojum?/
Almost out . . .
/Bwang-g-g! Something is chasing you! Flee!/
And the shadow-people whooping and whreeeking: /. . . the boojum! . . . insane! . . . controls the icecore . . . all through it . . . must be destroyed . . . must be destroyed . . ./
/Yes! Yes!/ Bandicut cried, swooping and turning as he regained his own equilibrium. He still wasn't sure where he was, but he knew the shadow-people had created a path for him this far, and Antares had shown him the way. /How can we destroy it? How can we get it out of the ice caverns?/
/Wheee! Wheeekeeek! . . . must destroy the ice caverns . . . it is the only way . . ./
Destroy the ice caverns?
/No! We must not!/ cried Ik.
Bandicut could not catch his breath. Destroy the ice caverns? Lose everything they had come here for? Lose a chance to find the Shipworld masters, and maybe a way home? Surely there was some other way! He could only peer around silently as he spun outward through the maze, glimpsing with heartsick disbelief the sparkling windows of information that would all be lost.
/Wheeep-wh'reeeep! . . . must destroy the core quickly . . . before it escapes . . ./
He turned and saw darting light and shadow—the flickering presence of the boojum. It was not after him now, but after a way out. It knew it was in danger and was trying to flee. The shadow-people were right; if they didn't destroy the boojum now, they might not have another chance. They had to destroy the ice caverns.
In this strange inner world, the shadow-people looked like darting bats and finger-shadows. He couldn't tell where they had come from. They seemed to be pouring out of some sort of n-space channel, but everything he could see was transmogrified by the phase-space shifts that both the shadow-people and the boojum had invoked. The shadow-people were swarming around the periphery of the icecore, demolishing connections to the outside with explosions of ice and snowflake. The enraged boojum flew in slashing orbits through the splintering core, opening virtual pockets then darting back again, finding no way out. It wailed, its voice running up and down the frequency scale.
>> Must not . . . not . . . not . . . not . . . not . . . >>
/Whreeek! . . . must destroy! . . ./
Bandicut was at the edge now, trying to stay out of the way. /Hroom, tell us how to help!/ he cried. The foreman-shadow didn't answer, but he felt another shift in the virtual medium, and saw a shadow outstretched before him, a shadow in his own shape, but elongated. He reached out instinctively to join it; he contracted into it, then back toward his own physical center, reclaiming the control he had given up to the icecore, to the boojum.
A huge bat fluttered close to him in the icelink.
/Wh'rooom'm'm. Hruuu-eeeee! . . . your stones . . . pull free of the icecore . . . quickly . . . Whreeek! . . . quickly, John Bandicut . . ./
He focused his thoughts dizzily inward, drawing himself out of the icelink connection. It was like pulling loose from a shower of exploding electrical connections, as the world of the icecore was stripped from him. He gasped a breath of real air, blinking his eyes, straining to peer out through the physically solid, icy snowflake that enveloped him. It was difficult to breathe, impossible to move.
Whreeuuk! ". . . stay still . . ."
Shadow-people, not images now but the real thing, swarmed nearby. The prison of ice crystals glowed like strands of molten glass and shattered. He gasped for breath, staggering backward. Beside him, his friends stood stunned amid splintered ruins of ice.
"Hroom—!"
Whreeek-k-k-k! ". . . stay . . . focus your stones . . ."
Stones? Bandicut clamped his eyes shut to focus, then suddenly hesitated, remembering the echo of Charlie's voice in the icelink. Was there really something of the quarx in there? There was no way to know, and too late to find out. One more thing lost. He trembled, focusing on the reality of the boojum's frantic efforts to escape into the icelines, to speed away to hide elsewhere. /Translator-stones,/ he whispered, /if you can do what the shadow-people ask—/
*Ready.*
He swallowed. "Ik! Li-Jared!" His friends were staggering toward him.
"What has happened?" Ik cried. "I could not see until the shadow-people came. The boojum—?"
"It's all through the icecore! This is its lair!" Bandicut shouted. "The shadow-people are isolating it." His heart was pounding. "We must destroy the caverns to destroy the boojum!"
Ik's eyes flickered in anguish. "But the information! Is there no way—?"
"I couldn't—I'm sorry! No choice, no time—"
"I saw it," hissed Li-Jared. "It nearly killed you. And I heard—Antares?"
"Yes," Bandicut said hoarsely, glancing up, around, for Antares. He couldn't see her. But he was grateful for her presence. "Yes. Will you help me, Li-Jared? Ik? Will you use your stones with me?"
"But the icelines for a continent converge here! What of all that they control?"
"I know!" Bandicut whispered. "But it's going to escape. Do we trust Hroom?"
"Hraah!" Ik's eyes flashed. "Then let us—"
Bwang. "—kill that accursed thing once and for all!"
Bandicut felt his wrists beginning to burn. "Hroom!" he cried. "We're ready!"
Wheeeek-k-k-k! A flurry of shadow-people stormed over his head and around the cavern, trailing an exploding line of ice crystals. For an instant, Bandicut thought perhaps the shadow-people were going to do it all themselves, and not need the stones. And then the starfire blazed from his left wrist . . .
*
The caverns were a crystal palace, of diamond surfaces and rippling fire; and around the rim were concentric waves of darkness; and in the middle, frenetic bursts of light shooting through interconnecting spines. In the midst of it all, erupting from three standing figures and bouncing crazily among the faceted crystals, was a squirming ring of emerald fire. The cavern looked like an enormous geode exploding with laser light.
Antares watched in astonishment, clinging to the rock face, as the narrow ledge she was standing on began to shake. She had pulled back from her shallow contact with the icecore as soon as she'd seen the others exit, amid cries for the icecore's destruction. Having glimpsed the boojum at work here, she was not about to argue.
Bits of ice were crumbling everywhere. The spindles that had held her arms and neck were turning to powder. She turned to scramble back up onto the higher ledge where the norg was waiting. She found a metal arm extended to assist her. "Are you unharmed?" Copernicus asked urgently.
"Yes, yes!"
"John Bandicut? Is he unharmed?"
She crouched on the wider surface. "I think so. But they're trying—dear sun and moon—to destroy the caverns!" As she leaned forward to peer over the ledge, she saw shadows swarming, and spikes of orange light flashing up from the heart of the cavern, striking at crevices over her head. Were they going to bring the ceiling down? "I think we'd better move away from here."
She felt a sudden burning in her knowing-stones.
*We are needed.*
/What do you mean? What for?/
*At once.*
A wave of heat swept through her. She knelt, clutching the robot's arm. "Copernicus, hold on to me," she whispered. She peered back down into the maelstrom of light. /All right,/ she said, raising her head.
From her throat, a beam of light shot out and ringed the upper cavern with a crackling hiss. From below, she imagined she heard a wail of despair.
*
The shadow-people carved ever-widening channels of n-space darkness, flickering with momentary glints of gold. The madly flashing presence of the boojum was rebounding furiously through the chaotic activity. Bandicut's and the others' translator-stones had been joined by another beam of light from a rock-ledge up near the ceiling.
Something very strange was happening in the icecore itself. Amid the pulsing light, the boojum's presence was becoming visible, without quite taking physical shape: a writhing shadow in the center of the icecore, hazed with an aura of desperation and anger. It seemed to know it was dying, dying as the power of the stones and the shadow-people destroyed its home. It was helplessly enraged, and was ravaging the stored information all around it in a futile act of destruction. It was all going to be lost anyway—the connections across the breadth of Shipworld, the vast vaults of knowledge, and whatever chance the company might have had to realize their goals.
For a frozen instant, Bandicut felt a hopeless, numbing empathy for the boojum. Whatever it was, whatever its origins, it was suffering in its final moments of desolation.
The instant of clarity and near-understanding passed with a whisper of regret. A large array of faceted crystals exploded in a blaze of light. Bandicut stumbled into his companions as they fell back.
He caught his balance and crouched against the light. The fire from his translator-stones had gone out, but whatever they had begun in the icecore was building toward a critical reaction.
Whrreeek-k-k! ". . . must flee now . . . flee! . . ."
"This way!" Ik cried, striking out for the wall they had descended into this place.
"Bandie! Hurry!" cried Li-Jared.
"Coming!" he rasped, stumbling after the Karellian. The ice formations were beginning to vibrate with a dissonant hum, like a crystal glass singing. He peered up the shivering wall, which Ik had quickly scaled with his rope. Li-Jared went right behind, and Bandicut grabbed the rope and began hauling himself up last. The rope twinged and began contracting, and he simply hung on as it pulled him up. Ik caught his arm and helped him over the top.
"Hurry!" Ik cried, coiling his rope with blurring speed.
Which way? Bandicut wondered, but the robot was in front of him squawking, "Follow me! Follow me!"
"Napoleon!" Bandicut was in front now, and he led the way after Napoleon, running on the uneven surface. Glittering ice dust rose in clouds as the crystalline formations crumbled. Crack-k-k! An icy stalactite crashed down in front of him. He gasped to a halt, shaken by the near miss. The rubble of the stalactite blocked the path, cutting him off from Napoleon.
"Left!" Li-Jared led the way through a detour, and they rejoined Napoleon and ran together toward the exit.
*
When the fire from Antares' knowing-stone cut off, the entire cavern was singing and quivering, and on the verge of exploding. Shadow-people were darting in incomprehensible patterns, and crying out to Bandicut and the others to flee. They were all running now, toward the end of the chamber to her right. She could still see them, but they would soon disappear beneath the overhanging ledge.
"Copernicus!" she shouted. "Let's get out of here! Can we go the same way they're going?"
Tap tap tap! "I'm in contact with Napoleon. Let us try, Lady Antares. Let us try!"
The norg's wheels spun and caught, and they raced along the rock ledge as fast as they could move.
*
They were almost out when the icecore blew. It caught them from behind, not with a physical concussion, but a rippling wave of spatial distortion. Tumbling in an agonizingly slow spiral, Bandicut glimpsed a rainbow flicker as the shadow-people's n-space channels converged on the icecore. Then his heart stopped. A horrifying eruption of blackness—the boojum—leaped in desperation into the breach, fleeing straight toward him. He felt its fury, its hatred and despair roiling outward like a silent explosion. He was helpless in its path; he could not move . . . could not breathe . . .
Suddenly the boojum jumped again, over his head, boiling upward and out, seeking escape.
Then the implosion caught it and funneled it backward, back into the blaze of diamond and the expanding circles of prismatic light. Swallowing the shadow, the icecore collapsed to a fist-sized black hole, then vanished with a thundering BOOOOM.