Heaven's Shadow (46 page)

“It’s not fair.”

“The universe isn’t fair,” she said. “Zack, I’m dying again.”

Zack freaked out. “No, no, no!” he shouted, holding her as if his touch could save her. “You’re just worn down. Let’s rest.”

“I know what’s happening to me!” she said. “This body wasn’t meant to last! It was only temporary, to give you someone to . . . talk to.” She was already mourning for her own lost life, for the experiences she would never have, for the faces she would no longer see, voices she would no longer hear, touches she would never feel.

For no more Zack. For Rachel never again.

Now she knew loss.

And the part of her that was linked to the Architect could only scream,
Why? Why now?

But there was no answer.

Moments later, they emerged from the tunnel into a chamber that dwarfed the previous one. . . . But whereas the human-friendly environment looked, at its most stable, like a terrestrial jungle, this looked like a circuit board . . . or an urban cityscape, all silvery towers and boxes mixed with coils, vents, bridges. There were broad passages between some of the structures. Others were packed as tightly as Manhattan brownstones.

And much of it was still taking shape, being assembled before their eyes.

“What is this place?”

“The Factory,” Megan said, barely able to speak.

“What does it build?”

“Environments. Life-forms. Supplies. Everything.”

“Well,” Zack said, “at least it will be easier to walk.” He indicated the ground, which had now formed itself into flat, bricklike shapes much like those in the tunnel between Vesuvius Vent and the membrane.

“And the environment is still human-friendly.” Zack had half-expected to start gasping the moment he and Megan cleared the tunnel. “What about those people the Architects need?”

Megan swayed. Zack caught her. “I’m sorry, all I’m doing is asking questions that can wait. You need food. We need shelter . . .” He trailed off. “Did you hear something?”

Megan stood up, alert. “Yes.”

It was a human voice screaming in terror . . . the voice of a child! “That was Camilla!” Zack said.

The Architect was due south of them—if north could be defined as the tunnel mouth—and busy with his own tasks. The sound came from their right. “Stay here,” he told Megan, and began edging along the rocky wall.

“No, thank you,” Megan said. “I’m coming, too.”

Approaching Object w Weldon others—big but so far benign. Sending imgs.

DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER BRENT BYNUM’S LAST TEXT MESSAGE

“No signs of radiation, at least.” Shane Weldon looked up from the Geiger counter. “But I wish we had some other ways of looking at this thing.”

“Do we even know what we’re looking at?” Harley said.

By the time they had crossed Lake Pasadena, Harley, Rachel, Sasha, and the mission control group had been joined by dozens of other people, all approaching the big bright dome of the Object from different directions . . . including one trio in a rowboat.

Harley said, “I just wish I knew where all these folks were coming from.”

“I think they were the same ones outside the center,” Rachel said. “The ones in the RVs.”

“I think you’ve just got a lot of the JSC community here,” Weldon said. “People who live along the lake.”

“I didn’t realize so many of them were nuts.”

“Only in a good way,” Weldon said. “There are lots of places in the U.S. where you’ll find people who are fascinated with spaceflight . . . but right here you’ve got a group that is not only curious, but involved. Naturally they’d be compelled to see something like this.”

What they were seeing now was a whitish sphere perhaps fifty meters in diameter, embedded in the ground and slowly rotating . . . dirt, debris, and even water seemed to be bubbling up around it. Visibility was still limited; the only light at the site came from the Object itself, and from the flashing red lights of emergency vehicles a hundred meters away.

“Well,” Harley said. “Look away. I am not going any closer.”

Not that that was an immediate option. The Object had impacted north and west of the NASA Parkway bridge over Lake Pasadena. JSC’s antenna farm had indeed been obliterated, but the damage was far less than Harley expected. “We should be seeing a crater here, don’t you think?” He addressed the question to Sasha Blaine.

“Yes. It’s almost as if it landed.”

“That’s exactly what it did!” a familiar voice proclaimed. Emerging from their left, having apparently walked from JSC, came another group led by Wade Williams. “What the hell . . . it came from a spacecraft. Logic says it’s another vehicle of some kind.”

Williams was clearly winded by the walk. He leaned on a tree as others from the Home Team caught up. “Gee, Harley,” Shane Weldon said. “If I’d known your whole crew was coming, I would’ve chartered a bus.”

“They’re free agents, Shane. They can go wherever they want.”

Williams heard the exchange and stepped in front of Weldon. “You asked us to give you advice on alien activities and objects. Isn’t this where we’re supposed to be?”

Weldon never passed up a challenge to his authority. “It’s where one of you might be useful. Suppose this thing blows up? Then where are we?”

“I don’t know about you, Mr. Weldon, but I suspect I’ll be dead.” That drew laughs from the Home Team group, even those who weren’t members of Williams’s claque. “And I suspect I could turn this argument back on you: You’re the mission manager. You’ve got a whole bunch of very important mission control types here. If this thing goes tits up, the program will suffer, will it not?”

“Hey, everybody,” Harley said, annoyed that, once again, his job was to be referee. “Why don’t we see whatever we can see . . . then go back where it’s safe?” There was no sign that his suggestion was acceptable, but there were no further exchanges, either.

Helped by Creed and Matulka, Williams began to make his way down the slope toward the Object.

Weldon turned back to his team. Brent Bynum was busy with his BlackBerry, of course. Harley wondered what the White House thought about the Object. Or what they were telling everyone. It wasn’t likely to be the truth.

“This is real-time, folks. Do we follow them? What’s our plan? Deferral is not an option.”

“If the Object were a weapon, we’d be dead by now,” Sasha said.

“Likely,” Weldon said. “But if not a weapon, then what?”

“Uncrewed space probe,” Harley said. “Or crewed.”

That caused Weldon to react. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe one of them is aboard,” Harley said. “Or more than one of them.” He hadn’t really considered the possibility until this moment . . . but suddenly it seemed logical. The Object was far larger than any reasonable space probe. So maybe it was a lander . . . an “Earth Excursion Module” for Keanu’s inhabitants.

“Maybe this is the
message
my mother told me about,” Rachel said.

“I think Rachel’s right,” Sasha said, taking the girl’s hand.

Harley looked at the two women, one thirty-two, one fourteen, and wondered how they had come to be friends in such a short time. He could never manage that. He had had a lot of girlfriends, but no real female friends.

No matter; however this situation played out, it was clear he was going to have to learn the art of friendship—with Sasha Blaine, maybe—and parenting, with Rachel. The only thing he knew about kids was that he had once been one.

He wondered, briefly, what it might be like to be married to Sasha . . . but why was he thinking about personal stuff when he was two hundred meters from an alien spacecraft?

He was tired. He was overstimulated. And he was stuck in this fucking chair.

“Hey, Shane, hold on a moment.” It was Brent Bynum, looking more harried than Harley had ever seen him, emerging from the shadows with his Slate.

Weldon turned away from his colleagues, glancing directly at Harley, as if to say,
Now what?

But once he’d glanced at the device, he brought it directly to Harley. “This is trouble,” he said. “Bangalore.”

Harley saw a fuzzy image of the other Object, in full daylight, suddenly expanding to two or three times its size. Text on the image said,
“20 MINS AGO THEN IT LEFT.”

“It left?” Harley said. “Assuming that’s correct, where did it go?”

“No idea,” Weldon said. “But I think this means we should go—”

Then it was if the whole world suddenly groaned. “What was that?” Sasha said.

The strange sound lasted perhaps three seconds. It was gone now. “It came from the Object,” Harley said.

The Object had stopped spinning.

Rachel said, “Why is it doing that?”

“Doing what?” Weldon said.

Rachel ran to Harley. “It’s growing.”

Harley could see it for himself. The fuzzy white dome and its strange internal components lost definition, becoming almost transparent . . . reminding Harley of what clouds looked like when you punched through them in an F-35. . . .

Then something passed through them all, an electric shock combined with a flash of light. Everyone around him cried out.

And began to rise.

Harley Drake knew the feeling: it was just like being in zero g. Only now he was inside a huge sphere along with several dozen, possibly a couple of hundred, human beings, trees, blocks of earth, birds, and at least one dog.

As he tumbled, separated from his chair, from Sasha, from Rachel, he could see Houston, and soon all of Texas, falling away below them.

I have broken agency rules and risked my job by posting here under a screen name, but to hell with it: this situation is beyond the control of any agency or nation. We are in a game-changer, folks. And there’s no point in hiding. My name is Scott Shawler, and I am JSC Guy.

POSTED AT NEOMISSION.COM, AUGUST 24, 2019

There was a dirt perimeter around the growing “Factory zone” that reminded Zack of the warning track in a baseball stadium. It was smooth enough to show footprints . . . human, barefoot, child-sized.

“I think we’ve found her,” Megan said. Her voice was weak and wheezing, not good at all.

“Someone else has, too.” Zack pointed to another set of tracks, long slashes alternating with splash marks that ran parallel to the footprints, and eventually on top of Camilla’s, obliterating them.

“Got to be a Sentry,” Zack said. “Do you see or hear that thing?”

Megan was scanning their surroundings, too. “No.”

“God, where is she?”

“You aren’t going to call for her, are you?”

“With one of those killing machines out here? Hell, no!” Zack squinted at the structures. The low light and unusual features made it tough to see. “I just hope she’s hiding. . . .”

Out of the welter of tracks that showed Konstantin’s final struggle, he noted the beginnings of another trail. “There.” Camilla’s tracks led directly into the Factory.

Taking Megan by the hand, Zack began to follow them. If he’d had any energy—if he’d thought Megan could keep up—he would have started to run. “If you can offer any insight into why this thing is on the loose, now would be the time to share.”

“They aren’t machines. They’re intelligent beings.”

“Then what did we do to deserve their hostility?”

“They’re no longer responding to commands, that’s all I know.”

Zack listened again. The dominant sound was the steady wind. Far off Zack could hear some kind of pounding, like piles being driven, and a low-cycle buzzing.

But no little girl. “I guess we should keep moving,” he said. Megan made no protest as he tugged her into one of the broad but still shadowed passageways. “Could you ask your Architect friend why he isn’t helping us?”

“Don’t assume he’s benevolent, or on your side. Or even cares.”

“I’ve got to say, none of this would encourage me to ask a couple of thousand humans to sign up for a one-way voyage.”

“I think he’s got troubles of his own. Remember . . . the Architect is a resurrectee, too.”

“And all you resurrectees stick up for each other.” Wait! Farther into the Factory . . . not just a scream, but actual words. In Portuguese?

“I heard her, too,” Megan said.

Tired and hobbled, both of them nevertheless started running. They soon discovered that their passageway ended in a shimmering wall that looked as though it were being assembled by the omnipresent Keanu molecular machines. They backtracked, found a connecting passage, and took it.

“So now we’re rats in a maze,” Zack said.

Camilla shouted again.

“She’s closer... .”

“It sounds as though she’s right next door,” Megan said.

The both heard another voice, this one harsh, guttural. “Is that who I think it was?” Zack said.

“Yes.”

“Tell me again about how intelligent these things are?”

“They were chosen for their size and mobility,” Megan said. “But the ones we’re seeing aren’t necessarily typical of the species. It’s like you hired human mercenaries and then complained that they couldn’t change diapers.” She tapped her fingers on her forehead, as if trying to improve the flow of information. “The big problem is they weren’t optimized for the same atmosphere as humans. It’s preventing them from following orders any longer.”

“You mean, a civilization that can build this vessel, send it across the galaxy on a fishing expedition that lasts ten thousand years . . . can’t manage some nasty-looking alien it picked up?”

“They don’t have total control.” She was shaking her head. “At least, that’s what I think. I’m not getting answers. . . .”

“Now I wish I had a weapon.” He stopped. They had reached a nexus where five different passages intersected.

“Any insights as to which road to take . . . ?” Megan suddenly started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Think about it. All the many choices we’ve made in our lives . . . all those other roads. Look at where they took us! How many roads are left?”

At that moment, Zack Stewart realized that they had, in fact, reached a final destination.

They were in a plaza. Like everything Zack had seen in the Factory, it was freshly formed . . . and already crumbling.