Distortion Offensive (18 page)

In begrudging agreement, Kane finally lowered his pistol, and a moment later Grant followed suit.

“So what do we do, Baptiste?” Kane asked, clearly irritated at the no-win nature of the situation. “As long as this guy's still here we run the risk of the whole library breaking up, don't we?”

Brigid nodded, racking her brains for an answer.
“There's always a way, Kane,” she said, “I just don't know what it is yet.”

With a flinch of his wrist tendons, Kane sent his Sin Eater back into its hiding place in his sleeve holster, and he turned to Clem. “You're our resident sea expert, Bryant,” he began, gesturing around the vast, dimly lit chamber. “Any ideas what all this stuff is?”

“I suspect that this material is primarily calcium carbonate,” Clem stated, “which would suggest it is coral-like in nature, presumably constructed by reef builders. In essence, this means we're walking on the external skeleton of a mass of live animals.”

“Nice,” Grant muttered, his nose wrinkling with disgust.

“These things dangerous?” Kane asked.

Clem showed his empty hands. “Who can say?” he asked rhetorically. “While the coral itself is made up of harmless polyps, it's not unheard-of for other creatures to make their homes within its habitat, ‘nesting' there, for want of a better word. The lights we can see all around us, for example,” Clem said, pointing to the dimly glowing dots of green and blue, “would appear to be some kind of shelled aquatic creature, although not one I've observed before.”

Brigid looked around uncomfortably, feeling a sense of unreality about the whole situation. “If they're alive, then what are they eating?”

“That's a good question,” Clem assented. “Polyps reproduce by budding, so they can take over an area quite quickly. Presumably, they're getting nutrients from the ocean-facing side of the library, imbibing microscopic external creatures like plankton.”

Kane gestured behind him at the towering structure
in the center of the chamber. “And what about the tower of power here? You have any insights?”

Clem took a step closer, his natural survival instinct warring with his fascination for the ocean and all its forms of life. “It appears to be a kind of shellac. Bug resin,” he said in clarification after a moment.

“Which is to say it's been grown,” Kane elaborated, ensuring he had understood what Clem had said.

Clem nodded. “As human beings, we can become rather entrenched in our way of seeing the world, considering constructions as purely artificial things, metal and concrete,” he said. “Nature provides in vastly different ways, and that's never more clear than when you're deep in the ocean.”

“I'm getting that,” Kane agreed. “So, any ideas how we deal with our big, bad stone god?”

The oceanographer stepped over to where Ullikummis sat, the whole arrangement reminding him of a throne. He peered closely at the attachments around the stone figure's head, the way the tangled briars wrapped over and under one another, tangling together as they drilled into the sitter's head. “Like a crown of thorns,” Clem muttered, recalling his previous Biblical reference.

After a half minute or so of silent study, Clem turned to the others, his palms wide. “Here's our Tree of Knowledge,” he said. “And I suppose that the things digging into our friend here's head would effectively be the apple.”

“Could we pull him free?” Kane asked.

“He looks to be a part of the system,” Clem said. “He's been hard-wired into it somehow, and the two now appear to have a consensual symbiotic relationship.”

“So he's feeding the system,” Brigid said in realization.

“It's possible,” Clem said, “though more likely the nutrients—the information—stored in the structure are using Ullikummis here to gain further knowledge and potentially access to movement.”

“Incredible,” Brigid breathed, her voice a whisper. “A sentient library that seeks to improve itself through shared experience.”

Clenching his fists, Kane cursed in frustration. “Then what are we going to do?” he asked.

“Ullikummis came here for knowledge,” Brigid reasoned, her words coming with slow deliberation, “but I wonder if there might be a way to guide the knowledge pathways that he is given. If we could somehow stream that knowledge we could, in theory, prevent him from gaining the insights he is here for.”

“In which case?” Kane encouraged.

“In which case he'd depart,” Clem said, following Brigid's logic. When Kane looked at Clem with confusion, the oceanographer added, “If they don't have the book you're looking for…”

“You leave the store,” Kane completed.

“Stands to reason,” Grant chipped in, though he was clearly as uncomfortable as Kane with the whole concept.

Both Grant and Kane were ex-Magistrates and more used to dealing with genuine physical threats such as street thieves and muties. Trying to do battle in the arena of theoretical knowledge seemed almost too obtuse a concept for them to comprehend, a battlefield neither of them could adequately envisage. But they both knew one member of their team did comprehend that battle
field and, coming to the same conclusion, they both turned their attention on Brigid.

Brigid herself looked somewhat embarrassed and bemused at the sudden attention, as if she had said something utterly inappropriate in the middle of a funeral. “What?” she asked.

“Archivist,” Kane said, “meet library.”

As Kane's ominous words echoed through the vast undersea chamber, Brigid turned once more and admired the towering structure at the center of the colossal room, her brain whirring. It was as if she was seeing that treelike hub in a different light now, seeing it for the first time.

“You want me to…?” Brigid began, the words tumbling from her mouth without conscious thought.

Kane wrapped a friendly arm around Brigid's shoulders, smiling brightly as he looked at her. “I just wanted to shoot our visitor, remember?” he said. “You're the one who went and made things all complicated.”

Brigid grimaced, shrugging out of Kane's embrace with mock irritation, but already her exceptional mind was working on the problem at hand. “If we can find an access point,” she said, pacing around the uneven hub in the center of the room, “we could, theoretically, alter the protocols, feeding Ullikummis false information or convincing him that the knowledge he seeks is not contained herein.”

“I don't know,” Kane said. “I thought Balam said this thing contained every piece of knowledge ever. Won't it seem a bit obvious if something's not there?”

“Not really,” Brigid assured him. “White light contains all seven different colors of the spectrum, and yet
when we see a plain light bulb we don't wonder where the other colors have disappeared to.”

“So, what,” Kane asked, “you're going to lose him in the…?”

“Dazzle,” Brigid said, finishing Kane's trailing sentence. “I am going to bombard him with so much false information he won't know which way is up.”

Clem chuckled. “Oh, the old razzle-dazzle.” He laughed. “The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd… Hmm, I'm pretty certain that's how it went, anyway.”

“But I'm going to need your help, Clem,” Brigid told him. “On one hand this may be an incredible computer database, but at a very basic level it's a giant undersea organism. What would we be looking for if we're to access its nervous system?”

Clem began pacing around the inverted funnel-like shape in a counterclockwise direction, rubbing at his dark beard as he started searching the towering organic monstrosity for signs of an entry port. With similar intent, Brigid took a clockwise route around the weird structure. While its appearance held some similarities to the coral floors and walls that the Cerberus warriors had seen, the structure that Brigid had identified as the library's hub seemed to have more in common with plant life. Growths poked from sections all over it, and the thick, trailing limbs that snaked across the floor reminded Brigid of the roots of a mighty tree. However, as she was about a third of the way around the base, she heard Clem calling to her.

“Found something, Clem?” Kane queried as Brigid jogged around to join them both.

Clem pointed, his finger tracing a high area on the surface of the towering structure.

Kane and Brigid looked, and they saw what appeared to be a split cone, its broken tip pointing outward from the rough coral-enshrouded surface of the hub.

“What is that?” Kane questioned. “Some kind of access valve?”

“It's a beak,” Clem deadpanned, the statement sounding faintly surreal as it echoed about the chamber.

“As in a bird?” Grant asked, striding over to join the others.

“As in an octopus,” Clem corrected. “This thing is most definitely alive, and it's structurally similar to an octopus. The hardened areas are probably growths that have attached themselves upon the octopus's exterior, either in a symbiosis or it may have dragged these to it to act as protection.”

“Does that put us any closer to finding out how to access it?” Kane asked.

“The weak points would be at the joints where the legs meet the body, which is probably why it's covered itself with coral,” Clem theorized. “An octopus can lose a limb without slowing down—it's structurally a very sound design. Of course, they are prone to psychosis, which often manifests in self-cannibalism.”

Brigid and the two ex-Mags looked at Clem in baffled amusement. He was in his element here, and his frank fascination was infectious.

Realizing that everyone was staring at him, Clem coughed into his hand self-consciously and returned to the more pressing matter of how to access the weird sea creature.

“Do you think it's really alive, then?” Brigid asked as she strode with Clem to a point at the base where one of the rootlike legs met with the main bulk of the creature.

“That's hard to substantiate,” Clem admitted, “without a full analysis. I suspect it is alive after a fashion, but I don't think we can truly call this beast a living creature. It's more like a—I don't know—potato. While it may continue to grow new shoots if one doesn't cook it, the thing itself is essentially dead.”

“Interesting point,” Brigid acknowledged.

It was hard to see exactly where the creature's leg connected to its body, there was so much armorlike shell covering the join. With practiced efficiency, Clem knelt and produced his little blade once more, using it to carefully pull away at the barklike covering. It took a little effort, but the cover snapped away with a squelchy pop, and a gummy trail of what appeared to be mucus came away as Clem wrenched a five-inch-long strip of shell from the monstrous limb. Underneath, a slimy surface was revealed, its skin oily and reptilian, shimmering blue and green as its sweat reflected the overhead spots of light. With the cover removed, it also stank, the smell like seafood, both pleasant and overpowering. Brigid winced and wrinkled her nose as she got a whiff of it, while Clem coughed lightly as he turned his head, allowing the stench to dissipate.

“It certainly smells alive,” Clem observed.

Brigid watched as Clem traced his finger over the network of veins that could be faintly seen through the surface of the creature's skin.

“Do you have any idea,” Clem asked, “what the stone man out there is looking for knowledge on?”

Brigid shrugged. “He's been off planet for 4500 years,” the Titian-haired archivist pointed out. “He probably has one or two things to catch up on.”

Warily, Brigid and Clem began peeling away at the hub organism's outer layer, seeking clues as to how to
access this curious piece of organic tech. While they did so, Kane went to check on the blinking light that Grant had set up, assuring himself that it would stave off any further altercation with the foul spiderlike creatures that had attacked them in the corridor. At the same time, Grant patrolled the perimeter of the room, checking into a few nooks and crevices he found there before joining Kane at the main artery.

“You wonder how ol' stony face got down here?” Grant asked as he paced over to join with Kane, his boots crunching loudly as they crushed protrusions on the uneven coral floor.

Kane frowned, considering the question for the first time. “Ullikummis survived four millennia in space,” he reasoned, “so I'd go ahead and conclude he's a tenacious dirtbag. Guess there's no reason to assume he needs to breathe. Probably just sank himself in the ocean till he got here.”

“Deep sixed, huh?” Grant nodded.

“Just a guess, partner,” Kane explained with a shrug. As he spoke, the ex-Mag became conscious of a noise coming from off to his left. He held up a hand to shush Grant, stepping silently toward the wall. “You hear that?” he whispered.

Grant cocked his head, listening for whatever it was that Kane had identified. Kane was renowned for his perception, employing something some had termed his point man sense—a seemingly uncanny ability to sense danger in any situation. Actually there was nothing especially supernatural about Kane's danger sense; it was merely the shrewd use of the five senses he had, for he was as human as anyone else.

It took Grant just a few seconds to analyze and separate the many different background noises in the
undersea chamber—the sharp clacking noises made by the scrabbling spiders' legs as they ran along the coral corridor, the faint hissing made by the gigantic hub in the center of the room, the strangely muted nonsound created by the ocean held at bay beyond the walls. But after a moment, Grant became aware that there was definitely something else there, a near-regular sound generated by some kind of motion. It was almost familiar, yet it took him a few seconds to properly identify it. “Footsteps?” he said, his tone questioning.

Kane nodded, fixing his partner with a wary glance. “Might be we're not as alone as we thought we were,” he said, and the Sin Eater reappeared in his right hand as it powered from its wrist sheath. “Let's go make friends.”

Grant brought the muzzle of the Copperhead back up to the ready position and followed as Kane stalked across the room, both men's movements appreciatively silent despite the hollow, unforgiving floor. “Friends,” he muttered in a surly growl. “Like
that
ever happens.”

Leading the way, Kane ducked his head and to the side as he tried to identify the precise source of the strange noises. They sounded like scrabbling, the sounds a puppy's feet might make on a hard wooden floor as its unclipped claws scratched against the surface. Kane peered around him, his steely gray eyes alert to any movement. Sixty feet away and off to Kane's right, Brigid and Clem could be heard discussing the intricacies of the towering hub as they chipped away sections of its shell-like plating. He tuned out the sounds of their voices, his eyes scanning the wall to his immediate left. The wall itself was blistered with polyps, and its surface was made up of intricately intertwined cylinders that
snaked and enwrapped one another with endless nuance and inspiration.

Down lower, Kane saw one of the low doorways, the things that he and Baptiste had previously presumed to be service tunnels for want of a better term. The entryway to this one came up to about the height of Kane's knee, and he eyed it warily, slowing his pace and bringing his gun to bear. There was no light around this section of the chamber; what few blue shells had been there had migrated away or winked out while Kane and Grant busily checked on their winking flashlight at the far side of the room. High in the wall, a few lackluster spots glowed green, though Kane dismissed the term
glowed
as wholly inappropriate—they seemed more to just barely exist, what light they cast doing little to illuminate the area.

A few paces behind and to Kane's right, Grant held his own blaster in a ready position, his gaze shifting from the hole in the wall to Kane and back. “Anything?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Silently, Kane stroked his finger against the side of his nose, offering Grant the slightest of smiles before he proceeded toward the gap in the wall. The signal was a one-percent salute, their shared code for high-risk situations with small margins for success.

Grant smiled back, feeling reassured that despite the insanity of their current predicament, Kane still had time to make light of the situation.

This close to the hatch, Grant heard the noise, too, like the scratching of claws against wood. He watched as Kane leaned lower, crouching on his haunches and peering into the foul-smelling gap, still six feet from the gloomy opening, the nose of the Sin Eater poised ahead of him. Then, with no warning, the scrabbling
noise became more frantic and something burst from the hole, leaping at Kane even as he depressed the trigger and blasted a stream of 9 mm bullets at whatever it was.

Kane's shots lit the area, and he saw the thing in a brief series of staggered bursts of light as it charged toward him. Low to the ground, it looked roughly three feet in length and was covered in glistening, dark green scales that reflected the fire of the propellant spurting from the end of his pistol. The creature appeared to have four legs—two short, flailing limbs at the front while it powered itself by two thickly corded, muscular legs at the back, each of them ending in a flipperlike fantail.

The thing's face was an ugly mess of contradiction. It seemed sharp, tailing toward a pointed muzzle at the front with two deep-set eyes, one each on the opposing sides of that fierce muzzle. The eyes were a shimmering black color, the soulless color of spiders' eyes, and they, too, glimmered with the reflections of the gunshots as Kane's stream of bullets cut through the air around it. But where the pointed muzzle finished, there was another feature, like some strange attachment hooked around the face to guide the creature's prey toward its needle-sharp teeth. These tools, for that was the only word that Kane could think of as he analyzed the hurtling creature in that split second, appeared to be something like twin shovels, top and bottom, and their shape reminded Kane a little of an old-fashioned key, with its jagged teeth and rounded end.

As the creature barrelled toward Kane across the hardpacked floor, it eerily made no noise. Kane watched in horror as his bullets banged against the side of the monstrous form, snapping against its scaled hide before bouncing off in all directions, sparks bursting across its
flesh like sheet lightning. And then it was all but upon him, and Kane rolled out of its path as its feet scrabbled to seek purchase among the ridges of the floor.

The scaly creature ran several more steps before turning in what appeared to be an almost immediate right-angle turn that defied belief. It reminded Kane not so much of a mammal as something else, something he couldn't quite place.

What the hell have we found?
Kane asked himself as he brought the Sin Eater to bear once more on the hideous-looking creature as it chased him.

“More company! Stay sharp,” Grant shouted as Kane took aim at the hurtling creature that was rushing at him across the coral.

Kane didn't need his friend's warning; he was already aware that a second creature had emerged from the hole that now sat at his back.

“Baptiste,” Kane said, keeping his voice low even as he engaged his Commtact in preference of shouting across the room.

“I heard shooting,” Brigid's urgent voice came back, echoing through Kane's skull implant. Her concern was clear even through the artificial medium of the Commtact system.