Quofum (24 page)

The tunnel entrance was exactly as N’kosi had described it and as his vit had shown it. The dark metal shaft pierced the solid rock of the hillside as neatly and cleanly as an antique hypodermic slid into flesh. Detecting and reacting to the darkness, two sets of cap lights and one thranx head flare winked to life automatically when they entered.

Striding excitedly down the smooth-floored corridor, Haviti was struck by the perfection of their surroundings. The soft padpad of their boots on the alien alloy underfoot contrasted melodiously with the percussive clicking of Valnadireb’s unshod chitinous feet.

When he had explored the tunnel by himself, N’kosi had proceeded with understandable caution. Having a known destination in mind this time, the three colleagues made much more rapid progress. The first glimpse of light at the end of the passageway impinged on their retinas barely two hours after they had entered.

They slowed deliberately. Advancing with caution while trying to make as little noise as possible, they approached the egress. N’kosi looked on with satisfaction as an expression of awe and disbelief came over Haviti. Valnadireb’s antennae inclined forward as the thranx strained for the utmost perception of their immediate surroundings.

Everything was as N’kosi remembered it: the enormous underground chamber stretching off into the unplumbed distance, the flashing and blinking channels of intense radiant light, the softly pulsing tubes and conduits and cylinders that linked ceiling to floor and to one another like some immense synthetic spiderweb.

Haviti swallowed. “
’E mea maitai roa,”
she whispered in her family’s ancient language. “It’s fantastic. Recorded images can give the appearance, but no way can they begin to convey the scale.”

Standing alongside her on four trulegs, Valnadireb gestured with a foothand. “This is indeed vaster than I imagined, despite Mosi’s strenuous attempts to convey the expansiveness. The mere sight of it proclaims it incredibly sophisticated, immeasurably advanced, and extraordinarily well maintained.” His left antenna flicked back over his head while the right dipped forward. “But the biggest question remains. What is it all
for
? What does it
do
?”

N’kosi started forward. “Let’s have a look and see if we can find out.”

As she paced him, Haviti found herself looking around uneasily. “What about those guardian globes?”

“All we can do is try to be as quiet and work as inconspicuously as possible.” He singled out a dense conduit consisting of layers of light pulses that sped in opposite directions between two glowing sheets of foil-thin metal. “Why don’t we start by analyzing this small energy flow here? Readings of strength, speed, and composition should tell us something.”

While Valnadireb and Haviti unpacked equipment, N’kosi kept watch. Having encountered the sweeper spheres in person, he felt he might be more attuned to their approach than his newly arrived companions. At the first sign of the sentinel orbs they would pack up their equipment and race back into the tunnel.

The more time that passed and the longer they were left alone, the more accurate and detailed the readings his companions were able to take. The only trouble was, they were not making any sense.

Rising from where they had been crouched around the conduit, Haviti and Valnadireb compared readouts and personal notes. Her expression and tone reflected her confusion.

“These don’t make any sense.” She was holding her analyzer up next to Valnadireb’s. “For one thing, they’re way too high.” She nodded in the direction of the energetic conduit whose continued existence and ongoing functionality blatantly belied her comment. “It’s not possible to contain that much energy in so confined a space.”

“There may be methods of compression of which we are unaware and are therefore incapable of measuring with our instruments. Indeed, such appears to be the case,” Valnadireb opined.

She eyed him dubiously. “You don’t compress energy in a coherent beam beyond what that beam is capable of containing.” Once again she pointed toward the conduit. “That’s a perfectly ordinary, visible flow, not a seep from the heart of a neutron star.”

“Still,” Valnadireb started to argue, “it is theoretically possible that…”

Neither of them being physicists, it was unlikely that the disagreement was going to be easily resolved to their mutual satisfaction. It did not matter, N’kosi knew. At least, it did not matter now. Having materialized in the distance, the orbs he had just detected at the limit of his vision were definitely coming their way.

This time there were five of them.

Two were purple, two orange, and one a bright, almost cheerful turquoise hue. Even as he spun to alert his companions he found himself wondering at the significance of the different colors. Were they indicative of specialization? Individual powers? Rank? He had no intention of lingering to voice the question.

Haviti and Valnadireb hurriedly reassembled their gear. Turning, the three visitors broke into a sprint back the way they had come. Looking over his shoulder, N’kosi saw that the quintet of glowing globes was not gaining on them. That in itself was odd. One would expect that should they desire to do so, spheres composed of pure energy could accelerate at speeds no creature of flesh and blood could match. On the other hand, he told himself, there was no especial reason for the guardian orbs to hurry. It was evident that within the complex nothing was beyond their ken, and therefore there was no place for intruders to hide.

He and his companions could run partway up the tunnel back into blackness, wait for the guardians to grow bored or move elsewhere, and then try to enter the complex again. It was a sensible, conservative plan of action. One he and his colleagues had worked out prior to making their initial entrance. One that took into account everything he had observed and recorded on his previous visit. One that he had presumed would account for everything.

Unfortunately it did not take into account the possibility that the way out might be blocked.

The sentinel orb that hovered in front of the tunnel entrance pulsed a deep, ominous magenta. Its lambent fringe extended beyond the edges of the tunnel as well as below the base and above the ceiling. There was no room, no space, to squeeze between it and the wall and into the metal shaft. Haviti looked back. The five other spheres were drawing close. They displayed no signs of impatience. There was no reason why they should, she realized. She and her friends were trapped.

Given the existing options, she did not hesitate. Neither, she saw out of the corner of an eye, did Valnadireb. Drawing their sidearms almost simultaneously, they took aim and fired at the center of the dark reddish sphere that was blocking their only way out. While the thranx wielded a pulsepopper, she employed a more conventional beamer. From the muzzles of both weapons, fire, as diverse as it was destructive, lanced out to strike the sphere.

A pair of small circles appeared on the lustrous curvilinear surface where their shots struck. These briefly glowed a more intense color than the surrounding area. Then they faded.

N’kosi had his weapon out and was now firing also. The aggregate effect of their combined attack was to produce three ephemerally glowing circles on the surface of the sphere instead of two. Recognizing the futility of the assault, Haviti holstered her weapon. Stepping forward, she attempted to squeeze herself between the tunnel wall and hovering sphere. Making contact with the orb, she let out a yelp of pain and drew back sharply, grabbing at her left side. Looking down, she expected to see scorched fabric and burnt skin beneath her clutching fingers. Instead, there was nothing. She and her clothing were both unscathed.

Except for her exclamation of distress and the sound of her companions’ weapons repeatedly discharging, the entire confrontation was played out in complete silence.

Slowing to a halt behind them, the quintet of multicolored orbs had formed a line blocking any retreat in that direction. The three scientists were now well and truly trapped between the five spheres they turned to face and the larger one that continued to block the entrance to the only exit. Instinctively, they crowded closer to one another. Valnadireb’s natural perfume was stronger than ever. Haviti kept glancing down at her side, still not quite able to accept the fact that her body and clothing showed no evidence of the searing sensation she had experienced on contact with the shimmering magenta globe.

“Why aren’t they crowding us out?” She found herself whispering without knowing why. “You said the two that blocked your path before pushed you out.”

“I don’t know,” he muttered apprehensively. “I don’t know, but at the moment I’m glad they’re not.” He indicated the five orbs that continued to hover in a glowing line before them. “If they were pushing, we’d be squeezed between them and the one you touched.”

Valnadireb did not whisper. “You’re certain,
trr! lk,
they are not intelligent?”

“I’m not certain of anything.” N’kosi shook his head. “I didn’t see any conclusive signs of it before, and I don’t think I’m seeing it now. They act more like devices than sentients.” He looked to his right as Haviti let out a sharp, nervous laugh.

“Toilet plungers. That’s what they are. And if that’s the case, then we are simultaneously redefined.”

“Take it easy.” Without thinking, he put an arm around her shoulders. As a gesture it was mildly condescending, but she made no move to shake it off. “They’re not exhibiting aggression.”

“Perhaps trying to decide what to do next.” Skittering to his left, Valnadireb attempted to dart around the outermost orange sphere. It did not move to block his path.

N’kosi frowned. “That’s strange.” His arm still around Haviti’s shoulders, he tugged gently. Keeping a careful eye on all the guardian spheres but most especially on the leftmost orange one, the two humans mimicked the action of their thranx colleague. As with Valnadireb but unlike on N’kosi’s previous visit, the orbs did not move to intercept.

The three of them found themselves standing, untouched and unharmed, behind the six spheres. The way into the depths of the incredible subterranean complex was open and unblocked. They could not really revel in their achievement for the simple reason that the only way back to the surface was still barred.

“What now?” N’kosi wondered aloud.

Slipping free of his arm, Haviti studied the line of spheres for a long moment. Then she turned to let her gaze rove free among the fantastical technology that filled her line of sight as far as she could see.

“There’s an old saying among my family. If the current is too strong to paddle against, go with it. If you are lucky, it will swing around and take you back to where you want to go.” She started off into the complex. N’kosi and Valnadireb were barely a step behind her.

Hardly a moment or two had passed when Valnadireb announced, “They’re following.” A glance backward revealed that the half-dozen multihued spheres were indeed trailing the intruders. As she recalled the pain of contact with the dark red orb, Haviti experienced a surge of anxiety. She worked to mute it. They could do nothing about the spheres. Only do their best, by exerting considerable effort, to ignore them.

“They’re not bothering us,” she noted apprehensively. “Maybe if we don’t bother them, or damage anything, they’ll just observe and leave us alone.”

N’kosi frowned, trying to make sense of it all. “Then why did they push me out before?”

Valnadireb made a joke his pre-Amalgamation ancestors could never have imagined, so alien had they originally found human beings. “Maybe they’re all male guardian spheres, and they’re more interested in keeping Tiare around than they were you.”

It raised a smile on the faces of both humans, one that in the context of the moment was invigorating as well as welcome. “Well, it won’t do them any good,” a somewhat less uneasy Haviti declared. “I don’t go out with radiant orbs.”

“Shame,” N’kosi chided her, trying to join in the heartening spirit of the verbal byplay. “Shape prejudice has no place in Commonwealth society.”

“All right then,” she corrected herself. “I don’t go out with
nonsentient
radiant orbs.”

Having succeeded in lightening the mood, however slightly, Valnadireb turned serious once more. “Do you think they have individual AI, or are they controlled by a central source?”

“Impossible to say.” Halting, N’kosi began fumbling with the equipment attached to his utility belt. “If we’re lucky, maybe we can pick up something like a recognizable carrier wave. One that is passed from sphere to sphere, or from sphere to somewhere else.” He indicated a row of what looked like clear glass ovoids standing off to their left. Three meters in diameter, each massive egg shape pulsed with light. Their interiors were furious, seething clouds of glassy multicolored shards speckled with fiery dots of dancing plasma.

“Meanwhile, let’s see if we make some sense of that display.” He glanced at the hovering sentinel orbs. “It will be useful to see if our guardians allow us to proceed with our work.”

Valnadireb looked the nearest ovoid up and down, his valentine-shaped head bobbing on his short neck. “It could be some kind of energy pump. Or highly advanced composter. Or anything in between.”

Keeping a wary eye on the six drifting orbs, they began to break out the instruments necessary to take the measure of the pulsating alien ovoids. Clustering behind them, the spheres formed a tight semicircle a modest distance from the visitors. The space separating each from its neighbor, Haviti noted, could not have varied by as much as a millimeter.

Eyeing them charily as she began to set up her own equipment and despite what N’kosi had said about their perceived lack of independent intelligence, she could not escape the feeling that the shimmering orbs were engaged in an intensive examination of their own.

16

As the day wore on, the two humans and one thranx accumulated a body of information and recordings a small portion of which would have been sufficient to astound the most venerated gathering of scientists the Commonwealth could muster. No matter where they went, no matter what they did, the silent glowing orbs did not interfere. They followed, and in their own singular eyeless way doubtless observed. But they did not interfere.

However, when individual chronometers indicated that it was well past nightfall on the surface outside and the trio of visitors attempted to leave, they once more found their way blocked. Not at the tunnel entrance this time, but the very route leading toward it. Their freedom of movement to go forward was in no way restricted, but the energetic spheres resolutely refused to allow them to retrace their steps back the way they had come for more than a few meters. When Valnadireb tried to make a quick dash around the outermost orange orb, it swiftly darted into his path to cut him off. Fleeting contact was made. Like Haviti before him, the thranx was subjected to the same sharp burning sensation. And as had been the case with the human female, he incurred no actual physical damage as a result of the brief convergence.

“They’re herding us,” Haviti mumbled unhappily as she sat down on the narrow path that ran straight as an arrow between clusters and ranks of gleaming, incomprehensible instrumentation. “Forcing us farther and farther away from the exit.”

Plumping his daypack into a pillow, N’kosi stretched out on the floor nearby. “It’s too early to be jumping to those kinds of conclusions. We’ve only been here for part of a day. It’s light but it’s late. Let’s try to get some sleep.” He squinted at the omnipresent luminosity that filled every square meter of the never-ending underground space. “Put a collection cloth or something over your eyes and try to turn off your thoughts.” He forced a smile. “At least the noise won’t keep us awake.”

“Tch! lk,”
Valnadireb concurred. “It has been an eventful day. We have accomplished much, learned much. The mind needs rest as well as the body. When we reawaken we can turn our renewed energy to devising a means of circumventing our persistent escort.”

Haviti was certain she would not be able to fall asleep under such conditions and such stress. Her fatigued body was equally certain she would have no trouble doing so. Somewhere between the two extremes of certainty, truth emerged, so that she eventually did fall asleep but tossed and turned while doing so. The hard, unyielding floor was probably as responsible for her uneasy slumber as was any mental distress.

When they awoke, almost simultaneously, the six spheres were still there. Hovering, Haviti saw, and watching, she was sure.

Wordlessly, the three scientists sat and consumed a quick breakfast, thankful for the technology that made self-heating food and self-cooling drink easy and portable. The meal concluded, they rose to resume their research. This time, instead of advancing deeper into the underground complex, they restricted their studies to their immediate surroundings. The last thing they wanted was to be pushed farther into the facility so that they ran the risk of not being able to find their way back. The locator signals from both N’kosi’s temporary camp and the skimmer had been lost, though whether this was due to direct interference by the guardian spheres or the insulating properties of the complex itself, they could not say. It was vital they travel no farther from the metal-lined tunnel than they already had.

Thankfully, the attendant orbs showed no inclination to force them deeper into the underground world. They were not being “herded,” then, despite Haviti’s oversensitive remark of the previous day. They were simply not being allowed to leave—yet. N’kosi remained hopeful.

The seriousness of their situation did not begin to really hit home until days later, when they started to run out of food. Despite the low humidity within the complex, drink remained available via the emergency portable condenser N’kosi had brought with him. But unlike water, they could not conjure sustenance out of thin air.

Already weakened from having spent the preceding day on reduced rations, Haviti chose a moment when she thought the spheres were at their least attentive to try and dash around the attentive semicircle of hovering incandescent globes. She might as well have tried to outrun a beam of light. As soon as she broke in the direction of the tunnel one of the purple globes darted sideways to block her path. Anger and frustration contributed to poor decision-making. This time she did not brush the sphere but ran straight into it.

The fiery shock of contact knocked her to the floor.

As she lay there on her back, crying, Valnadireb crouched at her side while a concerned N’kosi helped her to sit up.

“We’re not going to get out of here,” she sobbed softly. “Never. They’re not going to let us go. Whatever ‘they’ are.”

Fumbling within his pack, N’kosi pulled out a square of absorptive synthetic and handed it to her. She used it to give her eyes and nose a couple of desultory wipes.

As a species, Valnadireb’s kind were no more fatalistic than humans. But he had started to prepare himself.

“It is a possibility we must face.” Looking up, he shifted his gaze from his colleague to the hovering spheres. “If only we could establish some kind of contact, explain that we can’t survive on air alone and that we have to be allowed to leave. We could even take them with us as insurance against our return.”

If by voicing his anxious thoughts out loud the thranx hoped he might inspire some reaction in the glowing orbs he was mistaken. More than ever, their utter nonresponse to what amounted to a desperate plea confirmed their nonsentient status.

After a while N’kosi and Valnadireb helped Haviti to her feet. They suggested finishing the last study they had begun. She waved them off, no longer interested. In her own mind she and her companions, her friends and colleagues, were already dead.

Several days later they nearly were—the key descriptive being “nearly.”

One by one each of them lay down and stretched out on the smooth, porcelain-white floor, ostensibly to rest. Haviti and N’kosi on their sides, Valnadireb on his abdomen. Nothing was said, no words were spoken. None were necessary. As xenologists whose general specialty was biology, albeit alien biology, they each knew full well when their own bodies were failing. Eyes were closed. Breathing grew shallow.

For a long while nothing happened. The only sound in that part of the whole unimaginably vast underground complex was the increasingly feeble breathing of the three offworld visitors.

Then the glowing, gently pulsing spheres began to move.

When Haviti woke up the first thing she wanted to do was scream. Only when she realized that the hundreds of hair-thin tubes and lightwire filaments running in and out of various parts of her naked body were causing her no pain was she able to stifle the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm her. And there was a second factor that served to mitigate the initially horrifying sight.

She felt wonderful.

In fact, she felt better than she had in weeks. Gone not only was the gnawing hunger that had overcome her and rendered her unconscious, so too was the despair and the stress of fearing she would never again see the light of day. As she sat up she realized that might still be the case, but somehow it no longer bothered her nearly as much.

A sharp stridulation nearby announced Valnadireb’s awakening. The noise stopped as he stilled his wing cases and glanced around. Looking at her colleague, Haviti was able to see how precisely his body had been penetrated and pierced by the multitude of fixed lines and beams of coherent light. There was no bleeding, no seepage of bodily fluids. Peering down at herself, she could see no marks or scars, no signs of alien surgery. Tentatively, she reached down and pulled ever so gently at one of the hair-thin cables that protruded from her stomach. She felt only the mildest of tugging sensations, less than if she had pulled on and popped the knuckle of one finger. Bravely, she pulled harder on the strand. It would not come loose and the mild discomfort did not intensify.

She tried to grab one of the lightwires. As her hand passed through the pale yellow beam, she experienced a slight tingling sensation in her clutching fingers. At the same time, nausea flared in her gut. Hastily, she drew her hand back. Both the tingling and the nausea went away.

Filaments disappeared into her belly and chest, her back and legs, arms and feet. Several sprouted from opposite sides of her neck. Her head was unadorned, a fact for which she was unreasonably grateful. After all, with the rest of her body exhaustively and apparently irreversibly entangled, what mattered another line or two running from her skull? But she was thankful for the omission nonetheless. She thought she might try to stand up.

She was shocked when the exertion proved almost effortless. The hundreds of lightwires and lines and cables helped her up. With the intention of seeing how well her nutrition-starved muscles were working, she took a little jump. A small gasp escaped her lips as she rose all the way to the ceiling before dropping back to the floor. Her bare feet made contact with the slick, lustrous surface as lightly as if she had been no more than a feather.

Possibly it was at that point that she first became fully conscious of her nakedness. Or perhaps it was immediately thereafter, when a voice complimented her on the comely and effortless leap.

“Nicely done.”

Looking to her right she saw Moselstrom N’kosi standing in front of the row of ovoids that were the last component of the underground complex she and her companions had been investigating. Though he was equally naked she neither blinked nor turned away. As a general rule scientists did not suffer from nudity phobias. Valnadireb, of course, never wore anything more than utility belt and packs.

“You look better without clothes,” N’kosi added. Mastery of scientific detachment notwithstanding, Haviti felt herself blushing slightly. But then, why shouldn’t Mosi be direct? They had nearly died of starvation only to find themselves revived and—and what? Bound, experimented upon, entwined with strange devices? What had happened to them? What had been done to them?

Valnadireb ambled toward her. Cables and lines followed him, trailing behind. Studying them, she found herself wondering how much range of movement she and her companions would be allowed. Keeping his truhands folded in front of him, the thranx gestured with both foothands.

“We have been given new life by these machines.” With a truhand he gently lifted one of the thin lines running from his thorax. “I think there is no question but that they have provided us with sustenance, adequate hydration, and quite possibly a good deal more.”

N’kosi proceeded to duplicate Haviti’s ten-meter vertical jump. “I don’t think you’ll get much argument on that, Val,” he murmured when his feet hit the floor. The xenologist looked down at himself. “I’m assuming that our clothing was in the way of the procedures that were performed.” One hand tugged on a metallic thread that emerged from the vicinity of his spleen. “I’m starting to think that the alterations, adjustments, and modifications necessary to save us are more than temporary.”

Haviti pursed her lips. “I don’t understand. Why bother with us? Why interfere? Why not just let us die? We’re intruders in this place.” She turned a slow circle. The lines and cables running from her body adjusted themselves to turn with her. “The guardian spheres are gone, but we’re still here.”

Valnadireb speculated aloud. “Perhaps we are no longer perceived as a potential problem.”

“We’ll only find the answer if we look for it.” Starting forward, N’kosi resumed walking deeper into the complex. No pulsating radiant orbs materialized to guide his path. Looking back at his friends, he smiled.

“Come on. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get to see what’s on the other side of the proverbial mountain.”

The guardian spheres never showed themselves again.

By that afternoon one of the questions that had been burning at Haviti had been unambiguously answered. No matter how far they walked there always seemed to be enough cable and line length to allow them ample range of movement. Whether these were the original threadlike connections or whether they were being passed from one link to another, she could not tell. Looking back, the slender filaments always appeared seamless and unbroken.

Having been stripped of their chronometers and gear and in the absence of daylight, they were unable to tell with certainty how much time passed, but it was agreed among the three of them that the better part of a day had gone by when they finally chose to call a halt.

“Notice anything?” N’kosi was grinning over his tangle of threads.

Haviti and Valnadireb exchanged a glance. It was the thranx who replied, gesturing surprise as he did so. “I am not hungry or thirsty. I have not felt any such urges since I awakened.”

A look of amazement came over Haviti’s features. “Neither have I.” She looked down at her elaborately wired self. “I don’t know how or with what, but we’re being fed.”

“And kept healthy,” N’kosi surmised. “And who knows what else?”

“But to what purpose?” Valnadireb marveled at the alien life-support system with which he had been involuntarily integrated.

N’kosi’s smile faded. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ve been prepared to be the human equivalent of lab rats and are to be subjected to study by an as yet unknown sentience—Quofumian, cybernetic, or otherwise. Maybe keeping us alive is nothing more than untainted automated altruism.” Lifting his gaze, he nodded at the way forward. “Maybe if we just keep going, we’ll find out.”

Haviti would have shuddered at several of the prospects her friend’s conjectures called to mind, only—she felt too good. Was whatever intelligence that was sustaining (she refused to think “maintaining”) them supplying their bodies with more than just nourishment? A steady injection of synthesized endorphins would go a long way toward explaining her persistent sense of extreme well-being. But how would an alien intelligence, artificial or otherwise, know about human endocrinology? For that matter, how did it know what kind of nutrients they needed and in what quantity to supply them? It was clear she and her friends were dealing with a biotechnology knowledge base that was easily the equal of the astounding physical engineering they had already encountered. Where did it come from? Had it originated on Quofum, or elsewhere? And most important of all…