Chapter 7

 

Once again seated in the smart chairs that had extruded themselves up out of the carpet-covered deck, Marcus and Justin tried to appear relaxed as their kidnapper-cum-hostess explained what was happening.

“The Yud’ahm Na’uka has been traveling along a singularity path, a tunnel through higher space, linking two points in our own space. I opened the wormhole—” Marcus had to open his mouth and work his jaw back and forth against the vicious tickle that word had produced beneath his ear. He forced himself to listen again to the description. “—in an instant, the path is created, the wormholes at either end are created as potentialities, and we travel. As we are bound by the laws of our own universe, we must still spend some relatively small amount of time traveling, rather than appearing, in a moment, at the destination.”

She was moving her hands through two colorful, shimmering fields that hung suspended in the air before her flight chair. “Our exit wormhole will form as we approach, and we will reenter our own space. I’ve been told it’s quite an experience the first time.”

 Justin craned his head forward trying to see Angara’s profile. “You’ve been told? You’ve never done this?”

She shook her head, but didn’t look back. “My people live a nomadic life, plying the singularity pathways between systems. Before I could walk I had witnessed hundreds of these moments.” She shrugged. “I’m afraid with such familiarity, their beauty has been lost.”

Marcus stared at the back of her head. He had only been half listening to her reply. It had been bothering him since almost the very first moment he had seen her. He could forgive himself, he knew, considering everything else his brain was dealing with at the time. But the reminders had been there, constantly refreshed, ever since. And now, staring at her fine white hair, he let his mind wander over the subject.

She had shaken her head. She had nodded. Over the course of their time together, he had seen her smile, frown, shrug, and perform half a dozen other common Human expressions that had made communicating with her far easier than communicating with an alien should be. These gestures had allowed him to grow more comfortable around her despite the unnatural tone of her skin, the exotic shine of her hair, and the frightening sharpness of her teeth. Why would an alien woman, a stranger to Earth from all he could gather, share with him such Human movements and quirks? He knew there were people who attributed the changing aspects of animal faces for Human expressions. He had half worried that he was doing the same before he realized that no, in fact, these various expressions really did mean roughly the same things they would mean for a Human.

But how could that be?

He felt certain there was a great deal he was not being told. Her attitude toward Humans, well, at least toward him, seemed unqualified and negative. Why that bias, if she had only ever come to Earth to fetch back this scumbag boss of hers? Even assuming that such duties would have exposed her to less-than-desirable individuals, she had to know there was an entire crowded planet of other people, no?

“We will be making our emergence in just a moment.” She spoke in the vague tones of a person immersed in important work. She looked up through the view field, then back down to the swirl of colors that hovered before her. “If you watch just below us, there, you will see.” She indicated a point just beneath what Marcus assumed was the flightpath of the ship with one long finger.

Putting aside the various worrisome observations that howled for his attention, he sat forward. The chair followed him, adjusting to support him as he watched over her shoulder.

Through the viewing field the unrelieved blackness filled his vision. The sense that he could reach right through the field and into the void was more than a little off-putting. But as Marcus stared, he thought he could see movement for the first time since they had fallen into the black hole above the Earth.

At first it appeared as a swirl of deepest blue against the darkness. He thought it might be his eyes playing tricks on him, but then the blue began to refract into faintly lighter shades. The swirl was spinning, and soon he was sure it was no illusion. The blues continued to divide, and soon they were looking at a vast whirlpool of blues and purples and aquamarine, twisting out of the darkness directly in front of their ship.

They began to fall into the swirl, just as they had fallen into the first hole, and a familiar, unreasoning panic rose up in his throat. He gripped the arms of his chair and the material accepted his fingers, wrapping around them like wet clay. He didn’t notice.

The swirling disk of color continued to grow. Without a frame of reference, it was impossible to tell how large it was. Suddenly, it felt as if the ship was rocketing through the darkness toward the swelling shape. It was impossible for Marcus to decide how close they were, but he could not shake the feeling that they were about to strike its surface at incredible speed. Digging into the arms of the chair offered absolutely no relief whatsoever as the material continued to give way beneath his desperate fingers.

“We will be breaking the plane in a moment.” Angara looked back at them, her full lips curved in a cruel smile that, for once, did not show her predatory teeth. “Try to relax. It can be a bit disturbing, first time through.”

It would have been nice to have had that warning a little sooner, Marcus thought as he closed his eyes and tried to will his body to relax. It was no use. His brain was telling him he was about to crash into an enormous swirling wall, and there was no convincing himself otherwise.

He opened his eyes, figuring that he might as well watch the show, if he was going to suffer through the consequences anyway.

The disk continued to loom, asserting its size violently upon his senses. It was much larger than their ship. The colors continued to shatter, remaining within the blue and purple spectrums. He had never known there were so many shades, and under other circumstances, he was fairly certain that he would have found the entire spectacle quite lovely.

As it was, however, it merely added to the terror.

He was searching the center of the churning mess for some sign of a hole or gateway that would allow them to leave the darkness. Although the colors were darker and deeper in the middle, there was no sign of a wormhole like the one they had plunged into before. There was no blackness, no view of a star-speckled sky on the other side; just the spinning colors that had now swollen to fill the entire viewing field before them. The interior of the ship was bathed in cool light; the normal illumination overwhelmed by the luminescent glow from outside.

When they struck the barrier there was no sound, no sense of impact. One moment they were rushing at the azure surface, and then they were through. A billion strange stars blossomed all around them as streamers of sapphire energy tumbled past like spiraling comets. These ribbons flared out ahead, exhausting themselves, leaving fading trails of glittering vapor in their wake.

Justin’s gasp was the first sound that registered upon him after their emergence. Looking over, he could see his friend’s dark face transformed with childlike delight. His eyes were wide, reflecting the light of those countless strange stars, and his mouth hung open in an innocent smile that showed none of its usual artifice or sarcasm.

“Damn, that was amazing.” Justin turned to look at him, and Marcus couldn’t help but return the smile.

Marcus nodded. “If I wasn’t too busy shitting my pants, I would have wanted to take a picture.”

Justin made a face at that, shaking his head. “And you still want to go home?”

That brought Marcus up short, and he looked quickly at the back of Angara’s head before returning Justin’s gaze. “Not like I have much choice, apparently. So no reason to worry about it.”

Justin shook his head, his lip twisted dismissively, and settled back into his chair.

“So, tour guide, what’s next on the agenda?” Marcus looked at him, and then sighed. It must be nice, never worrying about anything.

Outside the view screens the sky was an infinity of strange stars, scattered like white sand on black velvet. Again, there was no way to tell how fast they were going, as the stars themselves shifted too slowly to offer any useful frame of reference.

“We are in Penumbra’s home system. We will be approaching the planet that anchors the city shortly.” She tilted her head, and Marcus thought she was probably closing her eyes again. He had come to realize that she was accessing information when she did that, and he wondered what sort of nanites were crawling around inside her head, to let her do something like that. Would his be able to provide information, if he learned how to use them? And how could he trust such information, coming as it did from a strange soup of alien machines living in his head?

“When we arrive, Penumbra will be on the far side of the planet, so you will be able to watch city-rise before we dock.” She turned around, and he saw genuine warmth in her smile. “It is quite a sight, I have to admit.” She turned back, settling into her chair in a way that seemed to indicate they had a ways to go. “I think you’ll both be impressed.”

Marcus eased back, staring out at the slowly sliding arrangement of stars as his mind wandered. He tried to empty his thoughts, to enjoy the moment. There seemed to be a great advantage to Justin’s outlook concerning their situation. While he thought of that, he could feel something moving behind his own eyes, taking the situation in, evaluating it, and storing data away for later analysis. He did not think it was the tiny little robots in there, but rather that newly reawakened younger self from his vision.

For years a part of him had known he had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. He had purposely gotten himself expelled from the school his father had put so much stock in, and from which his brother and sister had graduated with such high distinction. It had been simple, childish stubbornness, he knew now. He had had no intention of following in his father’s footsteps. Even back then, he was determined to follow his own path.

But by seizing the reins and wrenching himself off the beaten track, he feared now, he had lost his way. He had seized control of his life away from the others, it was true, but he had failed to exert corresponding control himself. He had drifted through life ever since, always taking the path of least resistance rather than making a stand on his own. That path had led him from public high school to a state college of no great merit. He had accepted the recommendations and suggestions of others without thinking through their implications.

When he had graduated, he had had no real preparation for a specific career; there was nothing he felt passionate about. He had again declined his father’s advice, ignored the efforts of his siblings to offer him help, and drifted off campus like flotsam, being dragged away by the retreating tide, and washed up at a two-bit local radio station selling advertising air time to mom-and-pop businesses and local restaurants that could hardly afford it. He knew radio advertising was nearly useless, who listened to ads anymore when you could just hit a reset button to hear another song? But it had paid decent money, and so he had stayed.

His life had been a grey expanse of meaningless work and empty distractions for as long as he could remember. In fact, other than the time he spent with Justin and a few other friends, only one thing had happened to him in the last ten years that had rippled the boring calm of his life. Clarissa had seen something more in him than others did. She hadn’t directed him, hadn’t manipulated him. She had been the first person, other than Justin, in a very long time who seemed genuinely interested in what he wanted, and where he might like to go. His head fell forward at the memory. And he had driven her away with a resolute campaign of indifference and carelessness, not liking the questions she had forced him to ask about his own life and choices.

There was a tightening behind his eyes; that younger self, staring out from the dark recesses of his mind. He could feel its contempt for the choices he had made, or rather not made. And he knew that contempt was his own. He had given up the wheel of his life, and only now, floating God knew how far from it all, did he realize it. It was an uncomfortable feeling, to be shamed by a psychological projection of your younger self.

“Here we are.” Angara’s voice broke into his cascade of self-pity. Marcus shook himself out of the dark thoughts and leaned forward.

It was only the second planet he had ever seen from space, if you counted the receding orb of Earth as he was being pulled away against his will. There was no doubting the enormous size and scope of the thing floating before them, slowly growing as they approached. And yet, he could not help but feel underwhelmed.

It was a dull, reddish brown ball with few variations in shade or texture to hint at any surface features at all. The sharp line of the terminator sliced off a dark crescent of night in the lower-right hand quadrant. The only movements he could see at all were strange, flickering lights that danced within the darkness.

He didn’t know if it was because the sphere out there wasn’t Earth, or if there was something more, but it did not carry the same majesty and presence his homeworld had.

“It looks pretty sad, actually.” Justin’s words were thoughtful. “No clouds, or water, or anything?”

Angara shook her head, sending the cascade of shimmering white hair slinking down over the back of her chair. “It is a dead world; no atmosphere to speak of. Only the endless dust storms and the lightning they generate, illuminating the night-side of the planet.”

Marcus got up and moved around the pilot’s chair to the viewing field. Even right up against the surface, whatever it was, it seemed to his senses to be a mere hole in the bulkhead, with nothing standing between him and the dead planet floating before him. “Was it always dead?” He thought he could make out vague crescent shapes on the surface below that reminded him of some of the older craters on Earth’s moon.

He could hear the shrug in Angara’s voice even with his back to her. “There are theories. Nothing left down there now, obviously. But there are scholars who believe the crater patterns are far too regular to indicate the random falling of meteorites.”

Marcus cocked his head to one side. He could never remember which word to use for the space rocks that actually made it to Earth. Meteors? Meteoroids? Meteorites? The little bugs in his head clearly decided to translate Angara’s word to ‘meteorites’. Were they right? Was that knowledge somewhere in his head despite the fact that he could not remember it? Or, rather, did it not much matter, and they just grabbed the first word they could find?

The thoughts brought back the sense of disquiet he had, knowing that everything he heard was being filtered through some system he didn’t understand.

Just one more thing to worry about.

The world spun before them as the little ship, dropped lower, preparing to insert itself into the planet’s orbit, leaving the advancing terminator behind. The surface slid beneath them as they moved toward the horizon. The system’s distant sun was above and behind, its position only noticeable from the illumination far below.

The planet rolled beneath them, the horizon crawling away in the distance as they dropped into a lower orbit. Aside from the slow movement of the planet, there was no sign of the ship’s maneuvering.

“You will see the city rise above the horizon in a few moments.” Angara’s voice was distracted. Marcus glanced back to find her hands moving furiously through the light clouds before her, her eyes flicking and distracted. “We’ll be docking in one of the busiest ports in the city, so once you’ve had your fill of city-rise, I’ll need for you both to sit down, or go in back for the landing.”

Marcus nodded and turned back to the view. Justin, standing across from him to allow their pilot to see between them, was grinning his stupid schoolboy grin again.

“If you don’t smile, I’m going to kick your ass all the way back to Earth, Marc.” The grin widened. “Seriously, if you can’t appreciate everything that’s happened here, I don’t want you to stay.”

Clearly, no words of Angara’s were going to sway Justin from his decision to abandon their home for good. And just as clearly, he still intended for Marcus to join him in his fantastical exile. He shook his head and went back to searching the horizon for this floating city. He wasn’t sure what to expect, other than, given everything else that had happened recently, it was probably going to completely defy expectation.

A sharp glimmer winked at them from the very line of the horizon, and Marcus found himself straightening up despite himself. The flash of light was soon joined by others. Light flashing off distant objects, he figured, although he could not make out any details this far away. He rested his hands against a bulged combing below the image, leaning in until his forehead was nearly lost in the swirling colors of the field.

The occasional gleam resolved itself into a small glittering object that rose above the horizon, twinkling like a thousand stars caged into some strange, mystical lantern. Now, with this sparkling image before them, he had a better frame of reference for their speed. The city, although that word seemed even stranger now as he beheld the thing floating in space, grew at a frightening speed.

As they continued to soar toward the distant object that had to be Penumbra, details began to resolve out of the glimmer. Marcus’s first impression was of a flat shape tearing at them out of the night. Tall needles seemed to stick up out of the general mass, stabbing up and down without any sense of planning or organization. Soon, the needles resolved themselves into glittering spires.

As they continued to close, he saw that the city was not spherical at all, but rather U shaped. A sweeping arm reached out on either side, each bristling with towers, embracing a gulf between them that glowed with a cold blue light. A hole set into the material of the planetoid shimmered with deep azure light, and a glittering, meandering ribbon of diamonds floated out and away, reaching down to the planet far below.

The most disconcerting thing about Penumbra, as they continued to close with the floating city, was the jagged, random orientation of the many towers. They slashed out into the darkness in every direction, although the majority of them, oriented above and below the plane of the place, reminded him of pictures he had seen that featured city waterfronts, with a city rising above while its reflection fell away beneath.

As they continued to close, he noted that each tower sparkled with countless lights. Many were oriented along the flanks of the towers, like portholes in a cruise ship. Others, however, followed more esoteric patterns, in circles, spirals, or scattered with no pattern at all. It was as he tried to follow the patterns of these windows that he realized how varied the design of each tower was. Some of them were very similar to each other, but for the most part, there were as many sizes, styles, shapes, and colors as there were towers. He could tell that each was fastened to the massive thing that lurked beneath it all, lending the city its shape and substance. The towers disappeared into a layer of iron skin that seemed to engulf the far aft aspects of each ancient ship.

As they rose up over the city, they could just make out a flat area at the apex of the U, where a semicircle of dull bronze metal, lower than the steel skin, swept around and surrounded a small dome-like structure, the only structure that stood all alone as far as they could see.

“It’s a mess.” Justin’s head swiveled wildly as he tried to take it all in. There were so many different designs, most of them defying any kind of analysis at all. Although the majority was long and thin, giving the appearance of a city Human minds could grasp, others were squat, or bulbous, or organic.  Marcus couldn’t even begin to imagine the internal layouts of some of the stranger specimens.

“How do you tell which way is up inside those?” Marcus was looking closely at a massive red tower with fewer window ports than most of the others. The construction managed to convey a sense of menace despite being locked into place for God alone knew how many thousands of years.

“Each tower was once an independent starship. They each have their own power and life support runs, as well as gravitic controls. All powered by the Core now, of course, and maintained by their inhabitants, or by the administrator’s office. But they all still use their original systems.” Her seat began to rise, moving her toward the view screen and shouldering the two Humans back to either side. “Now, if you don’t mind, please take your seats as I bring us in.”

They could see, now, a flurry of traffic swarming around a scattering of bright rectangles in the armored edge of the city’s crust, a few towers over from the tall red one he had been looking at earlier. The rectangle was teeming with small, glittering shapes. The entire thing looked as chaotic as the entrance to an agitated bee hive.

“We’re going in there?” Marcus backed in to his seat, which lifted up to accept him and give him a better view as the entire chamber seemed to alter, as if the head of the ship were lowering.

“This is the closest port to the control center.” Angara’s head bobbed a bit as she spoke, as if by the very motion of her neck she could make the ship weave through traffic that seemed increasingly intent on barring their way. “It also happens to be the main docking bay for this sector of the wing, so always busy.”

Marcus was trying to study the other ships as they zipped in and out of his vision. They came in an even more dizzying variety than the towers rising up all around them. Many seemed to follow the basic design concepts of an airplane. Many others, however, defied description. He saw everything from pseudo-jet fighters to floating rocks, spheres, and other shapes.

He did not, however, see anything that looked remotely like the ship in which he currently rode. He thought that might be significant, somehow.

Justin was ducking and weaving beside him, as if watching a car chase in 3-D. Their view dipped, and the broad expanse of the red tower had disappeared off to the side, rising up and away, over the command deck, and beyond the scope of the tilting view screen.

A large red space craft swept in past them, its aggressive moves clearly taking several of the smaller ships by surprise as they skittered out of its way. It was nearly the same shade as the tower overhead, and although much, much smaller, the design was similar enough to suggest a close, if distant, relationship. The brooding menace of the tower was clear in this smaller cousin, whose thick design suggested a belligerence not common among the other craft they had seen.

“Damned Variyar hotshots.” Angara spat the words as she swooped down to avoid the other ship’s wake, and then back up to resume her own path. “Always convinced they’re in a bigger hurry than anyone else.”

Marcus watched the big red ship as it swept toward one of the larger openings, came to a hovering stop, and then moved graceful into the dock. The white light emerging from within the building was eclipsed by the crimson bulk of the ship, and then massive blast doors irised closed, shutting out the remainder of the light.

“Hmmm … closing down an entire docking bay. Must be someone important.” Angara was bringing them to a much smaller opening. This close in, they were now alone, other ships no longer flitting in front of them, and Marcus felt he could relax a little.

The Yud’ahm Na’uka slid into the brightly lit opening, passing through a shimmering field as they did so. A large chamber, the size of a warehouse, opened up around them. Several ships were resting in white cradles. Marcus could feel his mouth fall open as he watched the scene unfolding before him, but he made no effort to close it. He knew that Justin looked just as dumbfounded.

Walking along the floor of the vast hall, most wearing no protective clothing that he could see, was an array of creatures straight out of a child’s worst nightmares. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some were tall and lanky, long robes fluttering around their legs, others were squat and fat, staring around belligerently as they stood, arms folded, around a small ship nearly as ugly. Some clearly had recognizable skin of half a hundred shades, while others were covered in hair, or scales, or completely shrouded in environment suits of countless different designs. As he continued to stare out, he noticed that far more of the workers here were Humanoid than he had first seen. Even the enormous, four-armed brutes muscling crates onto floating pallets could have passed for Human, other than that extra set of smaller arms beneath the usual pair.

“It’s like a zoo.” Justin was up again, standing beside Angara as she brought her ship into a gentle landing upon a cradle that had lit up as they approached. How she had known where to go, or when, he couldn’t have said. He assumed, however, that it had something to do with the robots in her head.

“A statement like that, overheard in the wrong quarters, will get you killed, Human.” She snapped at him, not taking her eyes off her landing. It was the first time she had given Justin a taste of whatever bias she held against the people of Earth. Marcus was honest enough with himself to admit that he enjoyed the reversal.

Justin, however, barely noticed. “You think?” He was grinning, but still standing at the view screen. Marcus got up to join him as he turned to their pilot. “Don’t worry sweetheart. I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

With a slight shudder, the Na’uka settled onto the supports. White vapor shot out from beneath, drifting up to obscure their view for a moment, and then everything was still.

Angara gave a soft sigh, and shook out her hands as if they were cramping. The colored mist through which she seemed to control the ship had faded away. She looked up at the two men, regarding them with her clear, violet eyes. She seemed to assess them for several minutes, and once again Marcus was sure she was spending far more time, with far less pleasure, looking at him. With a shrug she rose, moving around her chair as it settled down into the floor.

“Come with me. We have to make some quick decisions. This is even busier than I had feared.” She pushed aside the hangings and moved back into the chamber that had already played host to so many of Marcus’s less pleasant memories. Justin followed eagerly, with no hesitation at all. After a moment, and a last glance out at the menagerie moving around in the docking bay outside, he followed as well.

The lighting had not changed in the cozy interior room. Maddeningly, there was still no source that Marcus could see. Angara was holding up two bundles of cloth, one to each of them. The look on her face brooked no discussion.

“You’re going to have to wear these. We’re not going to be able to make it to the control center without being seen, and there’s no way any of this will work if your first moments in the city feature me having to fight my way through a mob, dragging the two of you in plain view behind me.”

Justin took one bundle, and Marcus, after a moment and an impatient shake by the purple-skinned hand holding it out, took the other. They appeared to be heavy robes of some kind; dark, rough fabric with wide, heavy cowls.

“These shouldn’t arouse too much suspicion.”

Marcus shook his head, looking up from the strange garment. “Suspicion for what? What, exactly, are you trying to hide?”

She looked at him as if he was a total idiot, and again he was shaken to realize that so many facial expressions seemed to carry over between their cultures. When she spoke, it was with the tones one might use to direct a family pet well past its prime.

“That you’re Humans, of course.”