Heaven's War (50 page)

“I’ll show you.” She led them through the portal, striding purposefully now, like a woman with a mission. For a moment, Yvonne reminded Rachel of Megan going shopping. Her mother often said she did not possess the woman’s shopping gene, the one that apparently allowed you to visit any store for infinite amounts of time, lingering and looking. Megan Stewart walked into a store with a list and walked out with an item soon after.

Rachel, too. She wanted to walk in and out of this store.

They wound up in a tunnel much like the one they had walked through earlier…old, still used, lit by some faint glowing element in the walls themselves.

“Now what?” Zhao said. “We’re close to collapse. I don’t think we have another multikilometer hike in us.”

“Wait,” Yvonne said. Rachel could hear a faint rumbling from down the tunnel. She immediately thought,
Not another cat’s-eye!

“Ah, everybody stand back….” That was all the suggestion they needed. Rachel grabbed Cowboy and joined Pav and Zhao and Yvonne against the tunnel wall.

With a notable gust of wind—air being pushed through the tunnel—and a throbbing roar, a module slid in front of them and stopped.

The “car” was open on the side facing them—the interior was featureless and appeared to be designed to transfer goods as well as passengers.

As for the passengers—the car would have easily held a creature as wide as an elephant or as tall as a giraffe. Rachel found what might have been a restraint strap positioned above eye level. But when she touched it, the material crumbled.

Yvonne noticed. “I don’t know how long it’s been since this has been used.”

“We’re in no position to argue,” Zhao said. “How do you make it go?”

“Where’s Zack Stewart?” Brent Bynum said. He was sitting on the floor of the Temple, the tipped-over Woggle-Bug terrarium in front of him…together with its smear of roiling, growing bugs. Weldon was with him; so was Harley Drake.

Gabriel Jones was asleep or unconscious a few meters away.

Xavier Toutant heard Bynum’s question as he hurried down from upstairs with food. Jaidev and his Bangalore guys were hard at work on…something. It had taken Xavier quite some time to get them to whip up some “fruit” juice and stew.

Xavier liked the fact that he had somehow become important to Jaidev and Nayar, and especially to Mr. Drake and Mr. Weldon. It reminded him of his first weeks at the restaurant, when Chef Charles realized that he wasn’t all thumbs and could be entrusted with independent tasks, and spent time talking to him during his cigarette breaks about cheap-ass Le Roi and the stupid customers. All that had ended when Xavier got busted, of course.

But so far, during his days on Keanu, he had felt that way again. As if he had a job, and that people trusted him to do it.

Even though he was hungry and tired, and more than a little worried about the Woggle-Bug deal, and about Chitran coming back and saying Camilla had been the one who killed her…and about Camilla, who seemed to have vanished…being sent to find Mr. Weldon had made Xavier almost unspeakably happy.

Right up to the moment when he found him with the one they called Bynum. Xavier had been surprised to find that being on the inside wasn’t fun all the time, and this was one of them. If he hadn’t already dealt with
the monkey, or with Chitran, he would surely have run away in fright. But he remembered the man from the RV! Knew he had been gunned down by the Chinese fellow.

So now he had become another of these Revenants, struggling to cope with being alive again—what did they see during the time they were dead, he wondered?—while peeling off the coating they woke up wearing, like foil on a tamale.

He had left Bynum for a few moments to catch up with Weldon, whom he had just seen going a different direction.

And now he was back at the Temple, fetching food and water for the latest Revenant. Who didn’t thank him or even acknowledge him as he placed the items in his hands. Well, maybe he was still in shock. Being dead would probably do that to a man.

“Zack’s gone,” Harley said.

Before Bynum could ask whether that meant
absent
or
dead
, Weldon said, “He and Williams, Makali, Valya, and Scott were checking out the vesicle port, then the Beehive. They never came back. It’s going on its second day.”

“And the Chinese guy with the gun,” Bynum said, obviously struggling with the memory. “Where is he?”

Xavier caught the warning look Weldon shot at Harley. Bynum’s voice was calm, if incredibly tired…but it didn’t hide the anger.

Which was quite understandable. Who wouldn’t be angry with the man who killed you?

“He’s also absent,” Harley said. “We sent him after Zack’s daughter and Taj’s kid when they ran off.”

It seemed to Xavier that Bynum was considering this—or that he had lapsed into unconsciousness. “You
trust
that guy?”

“It seemed like the right move,” Weldon said. “We’ve had a murder—”

“Besides yours,” Harley added.

Bynum stared at his food. Xavier imagined that it would require a mental adjustment to hear and accept phrases like
your murder
.

Weldon continued his update. “Some things are much better. We’ve made a lot of progress figuring out how to make the habitat sit up and beg.” He indicated the food in Bynum’s hands. “We can eat and drink
for a while, we think. Nayar’s people are already doing some pretty advanced…manufacturing or processing. But that murder…it seems to be tied to Camilla, the Brazilian girl—”

Bynum sat straight up. “Where is she?”

Harley looked at Weldon. Both men seemed reluctant to share additional information with Bynum. Well, Xavier thought, he was a Revenant…like Camilla. Who knew what side any of them favored?

Finally Harley said, “We don’t know where she is.”

“I don’t see Jones anywhere….”

Weldon nodded toward a darker corner of the Temple. “Look for yourself.”

The JSC director, formerly such a vital man, was little more than a shrunken husk dumped in the corner. “What happened to him?” Bynum said.

“Turned out he was suffering from kidney disease.”

“And is now four hundred thousand miles from the nearest dialysis machine.”

Xavier realized that Gabriel Jones was conscious. He had apparently heard what Weldon and Bynum had said about him, too. Which struck Xavier as rude and unthinking, not that any of the others noticed or cared.

“Okay, look,” Bynum said, “whatever, whoever…I’ve been given a second chance.” He looked directly at Harley, then said, “I don’t know how long this will last, but the fact that it happened at all…okay, miracle, right? And, hell, how many people ever have the chance to know what their purpose in life is? Even a second life?”

“Brent, what are you talking about?”

“Before…even in Houston, I was fucking up. Out of my depth. Then, when the…what did you call it, vesicle? That big blob sitting there near the center, when that thing grabbed us, something went wrong. I just plain lost it. I paid for that breakdown, okay? Getting shot will put you straight, let me tell you.”

“Isn’t it more being brought back to life that gets you straight?” Harley said.

Bynum smiled and took another bite of the stew. This time he blinked,
looked around, and found Xavier. “Hey, thanks, man. I keep running into you in some very strange places, don’t I?”

“Well, we’re glad you’re better,” Weldon said. “And that you have a purpose. Which is…”

Mouth full, Bynum gestured with the spoon, as if to say,
Exactly
. “I’m here as a messenger.” Then he smiled. “John the Baptist, maybe! Being reborn here has connected me to Keanu and a ton of really interesting stuff…once I figure out how to approach it systematically. Right now, though, I believe that I’m here to tell you—”

The subject was tabled for the moment, as Vikram Nayar arrived. With him was a slim, smug-looking Hindu…Jaidev. Nayar looked fretful, as Xavier’s momma would have put it.

If the Bangalore mission director was startled by Bynum’s presence, he showed no sign of it. Perhaps he’d been warned. “Did you find Camilla?” Harley said.

“No.”

“Do you know where she went?” Weldon said, losing patience. “It’s sort of important.”

“New kinds of hell are breaking loose,” Nayar said.

Jaidev had a Tik-Talk, which, on Nayar’s orders, he switched on, making Xavier wonder just how long the unit’s batteries were going to last. “My people are telling me disturbing things,” Nayar said. “The bugs aren’t just here at the Temple. They have appeared at least three other places.” Now he nodded in Bynum’s direction as he took the Tik-Talk from Jaidev.

Nayar’s hands were trembling, which greatly disturbed Xavier. Vikram Nayar was the most serene human Xavier had ever met—if he was freaking out, everyone should be freaking out.

Xavier was not one of the inner circle and had no obvious right to see what was on the Tik-Talk…but he felt, as an HB, that he was entitled. Also, by standing directly behind Harley Drake in his wheelchair, he was pretty much able to see what Harley saw.

Which was a series of cell-phone camera stills showing black Woggle-Bug growths on the shores of Lake Ganges, at the entrance to the Beehive,
and at least three other places Xavier couldn’t identify. Then there was a video showing a bizarre, augerlike thing grinding its way from underground to daylight with no apparent difficulty.

“What’s that?” Weldon said, pointing to the auger.

“Another type of bug, it seems. Or at least an agglomeration of them,” Nayar said. “They have the same coloring and texture. They even share the fractal structure.” Seeing the lack of comprehension on at least two faces around him, he added, “I mean, the regular edges. As we look closer and closer, we just see more and more edges.”

“Shit,” Harley said. “We’re dealing with an infestation.”

“It’s far worse than that,” Nayar said, making Xavier even more unhappy.

The next still showed a black auger that seemed to have burrowed into the HB habitat from below. “What the hell?” Harley said.

“At least four of these drilling creatures broke ground just south of the Temple within the last hour. They’ve given us a clue to the Woggle-Bugs, if, as we think, they’re related; these creatures are like termites, absorbing and eating, processing raw material, then growing and reproducing.”

“Shit,” Weldon said, rubbing his eyes.

“It gets worse,” Nayar said. “Next video.”

This one showed a winged creature—not big. There was a Bangalore woman in the shot, ducking away from a black dragonfly that was maybe a third of a meter long, with a comparable wingspan.

“This may be a third type. But we’ve only seen one of them so far. And this,” Nayar said, calling up a final video. “This one was seen north of the Temple, and somebody said it appeared to have emerged from where the vesicles were.”

“Zack said that was closed off,” Weldon said.

“Maybe Zack was wrong,” Harley said. “Or maybe things have changed. Things do seem to change around here.”

The fourth creature was taller, larger, long-legged. To Xavier, it looked like a big black anteater.

“Have any of these things attacked humans yet?” Harley said.

Nayar gestured with the Tik-Talk. “One of the winged things buzzed that woman. But no, no one’s been bitten.”

Everyone was silent for several moments, trying to understand what they had seen, and what it meant.

Then Bynum spoke. Xavier had been watching the Revenant; eyes closed, still subdued, he had been watching the others until now, when he seemed to summon energy from within. “Is that it?” he asked. His voice almost sounded like it had before his death.

“You need more?” Weldon snapped.

Bynum turned to Harley. “The word you need, Drake, isn’t
infestation
. You could probably deal with that. The word is
invasion
.”

Bynum turned to Nayar. “Your intuition was correct. All three of the new things you saw are just different forms of these bugs. More complex…templates.” He seemed confused for a moment. “Yes,
templates
is the word in my head.”

“The important question,” Nayar said, “is whether these templates pose a threat.”

“They do,” Bynum said. “They’re what everyone is fighting.”

“Who’s everyone?” Harley said. Exactly what Xavier wanted to know, too.

“The Architects,” Bynum said. “And, essentially, every other race on the NEO. They have been fighting a war against these things for a seriously long time.” He hesitated and seemed to check out, reminding Xavier of a sideline reporter at a football game listening to new information in his earpiece. “They’re called the Gatherers, the Ravagers.” He smiled, reminding Xavier of a quiz show contestant who had hit on just the right answer. “Reivers. They’re the Reivers.”