The Antags beat against the thick, cold air. We’re still in pajamas, of course, and now we’re freezing. Antags don’t care. We’ve made it this far, we’ll go the distance. Valley Forge. Battle of the Bulge. Those soldiers had it worse. It was lots colder in those places than here. But we’re still clacking and chattering and shivering. DJ is blue with cold, pale gray in the bad light—and maybe it is bad light, infected light. Who knows what the Gurus could use to punish intruders?
I don’t hear any echoes, any fragment of sensation that could help me figure out what sort of space we’re in, how big, how wide, whether it’s empty or filled with invisible snares.
Joe’s eyes must be sharper than mine. He tugs on my forearm. “Out there,” he whispers.
I look. Very far away, no scale to judge how far, I see what could be tangles of silvery branches filled with those elfin lights. Striking two ghosts together could make sparks like that. No surprise to find a Guru ship is haunted, right? Not just our dead back in the hamster ball. So many wars, so many seasons, so many corpse entertainers hanging around to learn about their ratings, how they rank in the sum of history.
“Bamboo groves,” Tak says. “All pushed together.”
“Bigger than that,” Jacobi says.
Ishida asks, “Wonder what could fit in there?”
Then the lights fade and for a time we can’t see anything. The Antags are still pulsing and drafting, still silent, and I don’t hear Bird Girl or anything else in my head. I thought getting beyond the gate would be some improvement, provide some sense of accomplishment, maybe a hint of our next destination, but so far no joy.
“Fuck this shit,” says Bilyk. Bird Girl’s translator goes to work. The Antags fluff their bristles, maybe in amusement. Maybe they agree. GI bitching is universal.
“We are okay for a while,” Bird Girl then says through the translator, so that all of us can hear. The translator moves over to Russian.
Litvinov growls. “Progress!” he shouts. “We need progress!”
Old-man words, I think. He’s the oldest of us, other than maybe Kumar, and he’s fading. Doesn’t make me happy. Litvinov is one of those people I’d like to sit down with and find out how they’ve lived their lives, where they’ve been, what they’ve done—outside of Mars and all this shit. We all have instincts about guys we’d like to ask personal questions or just listen to, no questions, over vodka.
Kumar is allowing himself to be dragged, not resisting, not protesting, hardly moving—maybe suffering from a hangover after giving in to his Guru conditioning. He said you had to be around Gurus for a long time to come fully under their spell. Maybe they lied to him about that as well. I don’t want to think about Guru lies or illusions because that takes me straight back to what was or is in my head and how Ulyanova used me, used that. Let’s pretend there really is progress, that we know what we’re doing, at least a little.
What did Bird Girl mean by searchers used as slaves? Their slaves or Guru slaves? Would finding them mean progress? And if we do find them and hook up, and they mean progress, but only for Antags—are humans then disposable?
Ulyanova would be so disappointed. She’s coming into her own, getting her own way, making this all work for Bird Girl. Her allegiances are getting complicated.
Joe and DJ try to separate their strands so they won’t keep spinning around each other. I’m lucky enough to be untangled, my leash beginning with Ulyanova, right next to Bird Girl, then stretching back to Tak and Jacobi—all in a row. We’re pretty good at using our parachute training to tug here and there and keep separate.
How long is this going to take? I don’t like fucking big ships. I remember watching science fiction movies way back when I was ten or eleven, when my mother, between boyfriends, would make me watch with her, and even then marveling at how engineers could shove gigantic spaceships across the cosmos, even then wondering where they got all that energy, doubting the efficiencies, all those cathedral spaces being dragged around wherever you went, like driving a car the size of a city. Even as a kid, I doubted those movies made sense. Boy, was I wrong. The Gurus prove me wrong. Sure, all our transports leaving Earth and going to Mars are small enough, in the beginning, and efficient enough, given spent-matter drives.
But Spook and Box and now this …
Once I nerd out, I can amuse myself for hours. But over time, and especially now, as I search for the open holes left by the melted and fused bombs, and not finding them—so are they still there?—the nerd impulses turn sour. I’m not a naturally cheerful and optimistic fellow. Had that beat out of me a long time ago, either at home or on the playground.
Maybe this isn’t a spaceship at all. Maybe we’ve crossed over through the gate to another dimension, a dimension not of sight, but of mind—a distributed hell-space with no boundaries, no walls. Those specks of light up ahead—the decayed ghosts of previous visitors.
Maybe if I felt cheerful I’d know I was no longer me. I’ve gotten used to this poor battered kid-self. Not that I wouldn’t like to be set free every now and then. With Joe’s help, I veered from drugs and moderated my intake of booze. I could have easily sunk fast and not climbed out. I watched my mother go into that pit a couple of times. The last time, Joe and I helped her out. Got her into a program. I watched most of her boyfriends dive into dope and booze and never rise again. And not just the guy who taught me how to use guns, the guy I shot, but the bank robber she dated for a few weeks. He spent his whole life planning and doing jobs and then getting high. When my mother refused to get high with him, he beat her, he beat me—and then he left. Cops got him outside Barstow. He ended up minus a hand in Chino.
“We need to get somewhere!” DJ shouts to the Antags.
Amen, whatever he means. But they’re still drafting. They still have hope.
And as for me …
I get metaphysical, inspired by all the weirdness. I’ve long since believed in God, but have never quite figured out what belief means, what God is, what God’s plan is—what’s in store, ultimately. What would it be like to actually cross over into a good dimension, into heaven itself? What would heaven be like? Would God be waiting to greet you, or would it be Grandma? My aunts? Former squad members? Veterans in full dress uniform, with their ribbons and medals and all? I’d like that, actually.
How terrific to know it’s over, that I can stop sucking in my guts and relax. No more killing, no more strategy and tactics, no more awful grief and mind-bending shock—no more war. Death itself is behind me, over and done with. What would that be like? I’d be a fish out of water. Where in this other dimensional afterlife could I get an assignment, get a job? Who the hell would want to work with me? Maybe I’m not cut out for heaven. But it would be fun to give it a try. Nature’s long, long vacation. Anything’s better than staring ahead at the armored butts and pulsing wings of a bunch of Antags.
“Where the hell are we?” Tak asks.
“Forward of the tail,” DJ says.
“That big bulge, maybe,” Jacobi says.
Ahead, the elf-lights outline another thicket, leafless but dense, a weave of long sticks or canes that surrounds our forward view.
I’m not getting any help from my Antag channel, probably because Bird Girl is intent on drafting this awkward crowd several dozen meters ahead. If the “searchers” and “slaves” Bird Girl mentioned are the squid we saw tending to the Antag transports, the double-hulled catamaran creature we saw through the walls of our tank … would this gym set of interlaced sticks allow them to traverse the larger spaces? Monkey bars for squid. They’d do better than us, certainly better than the Antags.
“Squid playground,” DJ says, squinting ahead.
I slap his shoulder for stealing my comparison. Borden looks irritated at both of us but Joe says, “Let ’em yak. They’re balance to the real crazy.”
By which he probably means Ulyanova.
“Starting to close in,” Ishida says. And she’s right—the thicket is narrowing.
“Searchers!” Bird Girl calls over the translator.
Emerging from the thicket come nine catamaran squid, grappling around the outer reaches. We hear booming and clicking, answered by Antag music and chirps from Bird Girl and her commanders, who rein in our leashes and gather us into a dense, weightless cluster.
The booms grow louder. In the flickering, come-and-go clouds of moonlight flakes, dozens of squid fill the forward spaces, crowding and bumping as they compete for a view. Each is about three meters across, with arms on both outboard bodies that can stretch an additional three meters. On each “hull” they display two amazing eyes, each the size of a human head, gold-flecked sclera almost obscured by large, figure-eight pupils. Again, four eyes—does that mean they’re related to the Antags? Other than the eyes, they could not be more different.
Then the sounds stop. The squid gather around us in silence. I have to think they’re not happy. Their arms quiver and dart back as they reach out to touch Bird Girl, the armored commanders, and then—me, DJ, Borden. It’s here that we all realize that the squid, the searchers, are pushing us gently aside, their attention centered on one individual in our bouquet of humans. Ulyanova.
Bird Girl drafts between us and the searchers and hovers, wings beating slowly. “These are the ones we hoped to find, the ones we need,” she says through the translator. “Keepers use searchers as drivers.”
“Are they friendly?” DJ asks.
“To us, yes,” Bird Girl says.
“What do they eat?”
“Not you.”
DJ grins. Maybe he and the squid will get along.
Ulyanova pushes past us. “They think I am Guru.” She smiles as if they aren’t wrong. “They will take my orders!” The searchers part, then brush her with their tentacles as she passes through them, spreading her arms and pirouetting. Her self-assurance is startling. She seems to pass inspection. Dealing with Gurus, maybe you get used to all kinds of shapes.
I catch a closer look as we’re cabled up again, matched in pairs and quads. Searcher skin seems to be covered with soft plates, like armadillos—a kind of exoskeleton. The plates interlock to stiffen an arm or part of the squid’s body.
The Antags urge us forward, into a deeper and thicker forest of canes. Within the thicket, scattered through the spiral, lie shiny dark spheres, each maybe thirty meters wide. More hamster cages? I don’t think so. More like living quarters. Searchers come and go, pulling and twisting around the spheres and through the canes.
Bird Girl decides it’s time for details. “These searchers cannot fight. They uniquely serve,” she says to DJ and me through our link. I get some of that—peaceable monsters—but what use are they to Gurus or Keepers?
“For Keepers, they know how to work this ship,” she says. “And for us, they swim on Titan and access archives.”
“But none came through the gate,” I say. “Have these been here all along?”
“They are from Sun-Planet,” she says, attached to an impression of wonder, hope, loss—and sadness. “They have been here for much time. But they remember our home, as well.” Bird Girl and the Antags really do feel a relation, an indebtedness, to the searchers, not at all like owners to pets. The relation seems to have overtones of a blood debt. Obviously, when there’s time, more needs to be asked and explored.
“Where are they taking us?” Jacobi asks DJ.
“Someplace where we can get a shave and a shower,” he says, almost as if he believes it.