Heaven's War (39 page)

Xavier wished them all the luck in the world. He was grateful that they’d figured out how to get some food out of the place, and even a few utensils.

They’d made a lot of progress in one day. Who knew what would be spilling out of the Temple over the next week or two months?

They might even build a house or twenty!

They could even build a whole town…complete with a farm, of sorts. Maybe a barn, too.

Because Xavier was seeing and hearing about animals emerging from the Beehive.

Xavier had seen the dog, of course. And then a cow, which some of the Houston people had claimed and were trying to feed.

And toward the end of this day, as operations and experiments in the Temple continued, he had seen birds flying against the strange ceiling of the habitat. He hadn’t been close, and the lighting was strange, but they looked like sea birds. Gulls.

That was all he needed. There was some weird shit going on in this Beehive place, and he wanted to see it for himself.

It wasn’t really very far, no worse than walking to Le Roi’s from home the time his truck broke down. And substantially less dangerous: no drunken cowboys gunning past him in their vehicles.

All he had to do was walk.

The whole trip took less than twenty minutes. Actually, he had a clue that he was approaching the Beehive before he could see it…there were muddy tracks everywhere, most of them leading out and spreading.

Xavier was no outdoorsman. He had never been hunting or camping or fishing in his life. So he wasn’t sure exactly what kind of tracks he was seeing, but even to his untrained eye there appeared to be at least half a dozen animals…and a couple of them with big hooves or paws or whatever the hell you called them.

And they diverged, too, some of them going up-habitat, back toward the vesicle port…some of them down-habitat.

Some unwary HB was in for a hell of a surprise, because whatever these animals were, they were sure to be hungry.

That thought made him nervous, because he realized the animals might be eating each other. Xavier was used to dealing with chickens and lobsters, so the thought of sundered animal flesh wasn’t itself a problem. But he didn’t look forward to the sight of a cow’s head ripped from its body, or a pile of entrails. No, thank you.

With tracks came animal shit. Lots of it, and fairly fresh, from the looks of it.

Suddenly the idea of exploring the Beehive was much less attractive.

The trail of tracks and shit led him right to the main opening, which looked like a cave from some old movie, one where you can easily see that the “rocks” are papier-mâché or rubber.

Xavier stopped before entering, because he could hear noise from inside the Beehive, some kind of terrible screeching and scratching, and his mind went right to his nightmare of an animal devouring another animal.

But the noise lasted only a few seconds. He waited, listening.

Nothing.

He looked around. No one watching, of course. And no four-legged thing approaching.

Xavier entered the Beehive.

He was instantly sorry that he had. While it was immediately impressive for its size and the collection of odd-shaped cells, some of them recently opened, others clearly in the cook phase, it smelled like locker room and garbage pile and flower shop and maybe something else, all at the same time.

It wasn’t all stinky…but it was thick. It made him sniff and made his throat itch, which was very unpleasant.

The ground was all slimy, too, not just muddy, but with some kind of yellow goo that was either drying or nowhere near dry.

He decided to ask Nayar and Jaidev to have the Temple give them shoes.
Size ten, anything you’ve got.

After a couple of minutes, however, and a few dozen meters deeper into the Beehive (which turned out to have branches leading in three
different directions, making him wonder how big it really was), Xavier was feeling more comfortable and confident.

He hadn’t heard any further screeching, so that was good.

He hadn’t found anything worth bartering yet…
but let’s see now
.

He turned up the nearest branch and found that the cells here were all large, and new-looking, and busy.
Don’t hang around here,
he told himself.

So he doubled back to the main chamber and struck off farther down what appeared to be the old, primary passage.

He hadn’t taken ten steps when he realized he ought to stop.

He heard screeching from somewhere in front of him.

And close!

The passage was twisty-turny and the light was low—really nothing more than the eerie glow from the cell fronts—so it was difficult to see much.

But Xavier saw a terrifying and familiar shape coming around the corner.

A goddamn monkey!

It wasn’t a big monkey—not gorilla-sized, for sure. But it was waving its arms and looking unhappy.

So, as Momma would have said, Xavier ran like Satan himself was in pursuit. Back to the main chamber, then outside…he made sure to put about fifty meters between himself and the Beehive before he slowed, stopped, and, panting, dared to look back.

He stopped next to a large rock that sat on a low hill. There were trees and bushes to his left…if he had to, he could slip in there and likely lose his pursuer.

The monkey had gone silent and hadn’t emerged. Maybe it found a banana or a pawpaw to gnaw on.

Xavier was happy to leave the creature to its business. It made him feel stupider than usual, however, having come all this way with such high hopes, only to end the adventure running in terror.

The one thing he had liked about Keanu seemed about to vanish,
to go wherever other great notions went, when they turned out to be crap.

Well, if he hurried back, he’d still get most of a night’s sleep.

Even before he started back, he thought of something cool. He knew about this monkey. Drake and Nayar and Weldon and Jones would want to know, too. They would want to take care of it; otherwise it would be scaring off anyone who tried to enter the Beehive.

And who would be the guide? Who would be the hero? Why, Xavier Toutant—he would lead the first monkey hunt on this new world.

He had gone no more than a dozen steps when he heard another sound.

This wasn’t an animal grunt…it was a moan.

Xavier tried to remember what kinds of animals could make sounds like humans. Panthers? Something like that.

Since he didn’t know, why worry about it?

But he wanted to check it out. Sounded pitiful…maybe some kind of cat that got mauled by some bigger, meaner animal.

The sound was coming from the trees. Xavier carefully approached, pushing an overhanging branch aside. He smelled tree of some kind.

And that weird Beehive smell.

Another moan, much closer.

Human! He was sure of it.

He pressed on and stumbled across a body lying near a tree.

It was a woman not much older than Xavier…but she was covered in some kind of brownish material, clinging to her like caramel on an apple.

She had scratches on her face where she must have clawed the material away.

She looked at Xavier and, sobbing, said something.

In two days of working and living with people from Bangalore, Xavier had learned a few Hindi words and phrases.

One of them was this: “Help me!”

Pav’s father, Taj, had a saying. “As the rabbit said while screwing the porcupine, ‘I’ve enjoyed about as much of this as I can stand.’”

Pav’s mother hated hearing such talk…. In retrospect, Pav realized, his mother, Amita, had grown more openly proper and Victorian as her illicit relationship with Vikram Nayar progressed.

Wing Commander Radhakrishnan wasn’t usually so racy, either, but he had a naughty side that emerged under the pressure of socializing at Star City, where vodka, as one of Pav’s friends there joked, “wasn’t only a breakfast beverage.”

Running ahead of Rachel Stewart and Zhao toward a mummy…trying to reach it before the cat’s-eye rolling toward them…Slate bouncing against his back (after being soaked in plasm, it was probably broken)…Pav had totally enjoyed as much of this as he could stand.

That was, if he had time to think.

The dog got there first, barking ferociously and jumping in front of the mummy like some sheepherding animal.

From the way the mummy threw up its hands, trying to protect its face, it was frightened by the dog.

Which made Pav even more terrified, because he could see the cat’s-eye rolling closer and closer, the strange blue light pulsing. It was like a slow subway rolling toward him…but there was no doubt that it was going to arrive—

Wait!

There was another tunnel to their left! He’d just passed it as he closed to within two meters of the mummy. “Rachel,” Pav shouted. “That way!”

“What about it?” Rachel shouted.

“You and Zhao—go there!”

Pav reached the mummy, performing a good American football—what Wing Commander Radhakrishnan called “carry ball”—tackle, knocking it down.

Then picking it up. Pav was fairly tall, but no taller than the mummy.

Nevertheless, he had gravity and what was surely his final surge of adrenaline on his side.

It was a fireman’s carry, something he’d never actually attempted, but,
whoof
, up on the shoulders, turn around, scream “Come on!” to the dog.

Start running toward a stupefied Rachel and Zhao. “Into the fucking tunnel!” he screamed.

They weren’t far away and he actually reached the tunnel just at the same time, bumping into Zhao and losing the mummy.

But only for a moment. He grabbed the mummy’s arm, and to his surprise, the mummy grabbed back. “Go, go, go!” he shouted. He could hear the cat’s-eye’s approach, as the main tunnel groaned like metal under strain.

Then he could
feel
it on his whole right side, as if he were being tugged that way.

Ten meters now, maybe twenty from the main tunnel—

And getting dark.

The cat’s-eye passed behind them with a crunching
whoosh
that made the light pulse.

Pav lost his footing, not because he stumbled, but because he was flying.

All of them were flying and falling down, down, down a dark tunnel.

Pav had time to count to a hundred, which meant that they fell or floated for probably three whole minutes, because he was too freaked out to think for part of the time.

He was afraid they were going to hit hard, like they’d been dropped off the top of a building.

But he could see no bottom…Pav could barely make out the sides.

Then they bumped the wall, lightly, but firmly, and began to tumble slowly, which, in normal circumstances, might have been fun…but surely wasn’t, here.

During one of the gentle rotations, Pav saw a circle of light ahead of them…or below them.

And it grew. “Hang on!” Rachel said.

“To what?” he said.

Two seconds later, they all fell into a giant cavern that, to Pav’s disoriented vision, looked like their own human habitat. But wasn’t.

More specifically, he and the others had emerged from the floor of a similar habitat and were looking and falling
up
at a set of squiggly glowworm lights. Pav turned his head and saw that the floor, still separating as the five of them rose into the air, was completely built up! Filled with structures making it look like a Lego city. There were odd open areas, like pools or lakes. Far in the distance, a jet of bluish material shot toward the roof, then died.

Meanwhile, like rockets launched from a city park, Pav, Rachel, Zhao, Cowboy, and the mummy were now arcing high—

—and helpless to do anything but fall.

Some force was altering their trajectory, however…“Do you feel that?” Zhao shouted. He was below Pav, splayed like a skydiver.

“It’s like a wind!” Rachel yelled. She was above him, gently tumbling, as he was.

The mummy? Not in Pav’s field of vision. Nor was Cowboy.

“Air current!” Pav said. How was it supposed to go, maneuvering in microgravity? His father had shown him video from his space station mission…
Tuck your legs, arms, and you’ll spin faster. Spread them, and you’ll slow.

He extended his arms and legs, which felt very strange indeed. But he was essentially weightless…like hundreds of space travelers. Like he’d been for two days in the Bangalore vesicle.

You’d think he’d be used to it!
Tell that to your stomach!
He couldn’t escape the horrifying feeling of falling, falling…