Heaven's War (53 page)

“Everything shut down when the car started moving,” Yvonne said. “It was kind of a relief, I have to say. Like having the noisy folks next door turning off the loud music.”

“It leaves us blind, however.” Zhao said. “Or, rather…deaf.”

“Maybe it will start up when we get wherever this is going,” Pav said. He sure hoped so. For a moment, he imagined them simply ping-ponging through the interior of Keanu forever…or until they starved or died of thirst.

“Look, everyone, the voices told me to get in the railcar, go with it. It’s taking us somewhere—”

Zhao gestured to Pav and to Rachel.
“Why aren’t you taking us back to our habitat?”

Yvonne blinked, like a student facing a surprise question on an exam. “Because the voices said to take you to the control center. Not back where you came from.”

“But what are
we
supposed to do
there
?” Rachel said.

“That isn’t clear,” Yvonne said. “I realize that’s…not satisfying. I don’t like it, either. But there’s a job you and I and maybe even Cowboy have to do once we arrive.”

The dog whimpered. Pav doubted he was responding to the sound of his name, because he seemed to be asleep. Pav wondered…what kind of dreams did dogs have? All about chasing animals? Eating?

What kind of dreams did Revenant dogs have?

Thoughts of eating prompted Pav to ask Yvonne, “Will there be food when we get to the control center?”

She smiled. “I hope so. I haven’t eaten since I got killed.”

“That’s so weird,” Pav said.

“Tell me about it,” Yvonne said.

“Why are you doing this? Helping us. Finding the control center, all of that. If I’d been dead and brought back, I’d still be trying to figure it all out.”

She gave a snorting laugh. “I’d like nothing better.” Then she grew quiet for a moment. “I screwed up,” she said. “About as big a screwup as anyone ever made—”

“My dad says it was Houston and Washington’s fault—”

“But I was the one
there
,” Yvonne said. “I was the one who…got scared and set off the bomb. So this is a way for me to put things right.” There was a faraway look in her eyes that made Pav uncomfortable, as if he were looking at a ghost.

Then she said, “I just wish I knew what made Pogo go so crazy.”

“I have no idea,” Pav said. He only knew what had happened, that Pogo Downey, one of the four American astronauts, had been killed, then turned into a Revenant. And that he had tried to go aboard the
Venture
lander.

“It’s not like I’ve had time to think it over,” Yvonne said, shaking her head at the sheer mystery of the experience. “To me, it all happened, like, half an hour before I met you guys. I thought he was trying to take over the lander. Take off with it and fly it back to
Destiny
and not only leave everyone behind, but become some nasty kind of alien invader on Earth. But, you know, second thought? I wonder if he was trying to provoke me—provoke NASA or the White House—to set off that nuke and keep Keanu beings from reaching Earth.”

“Could he do that?” Pav said. “I mean, aren’t you…under control?”

Yvonne laughed. “Well, hell, I suppose I wouldn’t really know, would I? But what I think, right now, is this: We’re messengers or facilitators. We’re supposed to be a link between the Architects and you. We have information, but we’re not puppets.”

Then Rachel stirred and shifted, distracting Pav. Yvonne reached for the dog, too, and the magical moment was over.

Pav was okay with that. He was feeling the way he had when his father talked to him about business or politics, where his lack of even basic information made him feel stupid. He didn’t like that feeling.

Rachel automatically opened the Slate in her lap, calling up the image of her mother, Megan. “You mind?” she said.

“It’s okay,” he told her. Even though he wore the Slate on a strap, even though it had the same mass as a print magazine, he was tired of lugging it through tunnels and while running for his life from hostile Long Legs.

Tired of worrying about losing it. Not that the unit was going to be much use when its battery died…tomorrow or next week, what difference did it make?

Oops, he was back to thinking about death.
Stop it. Think about this control center Yvonne promised. Where you can fly the starship…access the other habitats…

Pav looked at the inkings on his arm. He remembered being obsessed with getting one. It was the one thing the vyomanaut’s kid could to do make himself momentarily cool, to remove himself from the science geek world and put him firmly into music. He wished he had a pen right now. There was a perfect spot to draw something…Captain of Keanu would be good. Or Long Legs Killer.

Rachel sniffed. Yvonne and Zhao were too far away to see, or pretended not to, but the girl was
crying
.

It was just one more annoying thing, from being angry all the time or weepy half the time, or too smart-ass or too needy or not fast enough or too young or whatever…he wasn’t sure he liked this girl at all.

But he would have been pissed if she’d been leaning on Zhao or Yvonne instead of him—

The railcar simply stopped.

And the lights died.

“Please tell me this is normal,” Rachel said.

“Did your voices tell you about this?” Zhao said to Yvonne.

Yvonne’s body language was all the answer Pav needed. She slowly pushed up against the wall behind her, shaking her head slowly.
Trying to tune in?
Pav wondered.

Cowboy got to his four feet.

The only light was from the screen of the Slate.

“Can anyone hear ventilation?” Zhao said.

“We’re still breathing,” Yvonne said. She worked her way to the open side of the car and looked out. “Hey, I see something ahead of us.”

And she clambered down and out.

Cowboy followed her as if commanded.

“Well,” Zhao said, “do as our Revenants do.”

They were a hundred meters short of an opening. With Yvonne eagerly leading the way, Cowboy dogging her heels, Pav, Rachel, and Zhao followed.

“Is your Wi-Fi working again?” Pav called. He had the Slate slung over his shoulder again. He wished he had his own Wi-Fi—or some way to contact Nayar and the others in the human habitat. They must believe them all dead by now.

Suddenly the lights and power returned. As one, the humans and the dog all looked back at the railcar, which was making lively sounds again. “Is that going to move?” Zhao said.

“Let’s not find out,” Yvonne said. “Besides, we’ve arrived.”

The transition was quick…up a set of broad, slightly too-tall steps (Pav had to help Rachel), across an aged and faded tile surface, then through another tunnel much like the one that first gave them access to the human habitat.

The interior of the control habitat was so bright it hurt Pav’s eyes. Blinking, he was able to see a brilliant, gridlike set of structures stretching to the far side of the habitat…which appeared to be smaller than the human one. It was like looking at a circuit board the size of a city…from the inside.

“You know, Yvonne,” Zhao said behind Pav, “I’m very glad you have that guidance in your head. I can’t imagine what task we’re supposed to be accomplishing…or where we would start.”

“So where
do
we go?” Rachel said. She was sounding more and more impatient.

Yvonne looked from side to side. “We’re meeting someone.”

“Who?” Zhao said.

Yvonne smiled. “Our guide, okay? Things are a bit confused. There
should be a Beehive somewhere along here…. Everyone split up and see if you can find—”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Pav said. “We split up and we’ll never find each other again.”

“We don’t split up and we may never find the thing we’re supposed to meet.”

“Fine,” Zhao said. “Rachel and the dog and I will take this direction, along the wall. A hundred meters, and then we return to this place. You and Pav do the same the other direction. If we don’t find our mystery alien, we do another search.”

Rachel was about to protest, but Yvonne simply said, “Back in a few.” And took off.

As Pav hurried to catch up, he wondered why Zhao had teamed them the way he had. An adult in each team, probably. It would have made more sense to put Rachel with Yvonne, but Pav could tell that Zhao didn’t like him. He really didn’t seem to like Indians, period.

Suddenly the lights in the habitat died, leaving them in the most total darkness Pav had ever experienced. The drone of machines, the whisper of wind or airflow…sounds Pav hadn’t consciously noted, those were gone, too.

“Uh, here we go again?”

“My voices just went silent, too,” Yvonne said.

“What do we do?”

“Well, the last time the power went out—” Before she finished the statement, the lights and power resumed, though not without a disturbing shower of sparks and arcing from somewhere nearby.

“Yvonne, is this place falling apart?” Pav had a tough time thinking of a millennium-old alien starship as needing maintenance…but on further consideration, why not?

“There,” she said.

A giant creature, easily twice the size of a human being, like some kind of ancient knight, but with four arms, sat on the bench like an old man in a park.

She sent Pav back to the rendezvous point to meet Rachel and Zhao. “We found him.”

“Found what?” Zhao said.

“An Architect.”

For a young man who never expected to ever meet an alien creature, two in one day was almost too many for Pav. Even so, trying to be calm and grown-up…Pav thought Yvonne and the Architect seemed like an unhappy couple. The alien was still slumped, almost immobile, its two legs sticking out like logs, its four arms limp like spaghetti…while Yvonne stood directly in front of him. She looked like a pilgrim making an offering to a badly designed stone god.

Zhao approached Yvonne, speaking so softly that Pav and Rachel, left behind, couldn’t hear. Cowboy simply flopped on the ground, happier than he’d been in a while, apparently willing to see what these creatures got up to.

Only now did Pav notice that the Architect was partly covered in the same coating as the earlier Revenants. “I think he’s just come back from the dead,” he whispered to Rachel.

“That’s not good.”

“Why?”

“Because all the Revenants take a while to boot up.”

That had certainly been the case with Yvonne. And, judging from the Architect, here, too.

Yvonne turned away from the alien and walked toward Pav and Rachel. “God, this is so frustrating.”

“What’s wrong?” Pav said, suddenly alarmed. “Isn’t he the one you’ve been hearing in your head all along?”

“No! At least, I don’t think so. I think he was just reborn like me.”

“My dad said my mother could speak directly to her Architect.”

“I can speak to him,” Yvonne said. “I’m just not getting much back.”

“How much speaking did you do when you were just…alive again?” Pav said, looking at Rachel, as if to say,
Shouldn’t we ask this?

Yvonne frowned. “Good point. But we don’t have all the time in the world.” She tapped her head. “My Wi-Fi was pretty clear on that.”

“Yvonne, come back here!” Zhao said. “Bring Rachel, too!”

Zhao had stayed with the Architect, essentially keeping the giant alien company. As he and the others approached, Pav saw Zhao stand on tiptoes to touch one of the Architect’s “hands”—which flexed, then folded up, as if the alien were doing a curl.

“What the hell are you doing?” Yvonne said.

“Just testing our friend,” Zhao said. “He seems to be in distress.”

“Noted,” Yvonne said. “Now what?”

Zhao pointed at Rachel. “I heard her talk about her mother. And it occurs to me that the Architect might know about her and about Zack Stewart, too—”

The mention of Zack’s name caused the Architect to stir and stand up to its complete, towering height. For Pav it was like watching a building being erected…and took a considerable amount of time.
They’re
slow, he realized.

“He’s trying to tell me something,” Yvonne said. She put her hands to her head and groaned. “God, it’s just so…noisy!”

Zhao put his hands on Yvonne’s shoulders, rubbing them like a trainer with a boxer. “Relax, find the message…he obviously wants to communicate with us. You just have to allow it.”

Yvonne’s tortured expression suddenly relaxed. To Pav, it was as if the woman had just found the right channel on a radio. “He says, ‘I am the Builders or the Designers or Architects.’ Plural.”

“Is there more than one of them in there?” Pav said. The creature was big enough to hold multiple personalities.