Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) Read online

  "Ho, man, Bandie! If you're not in some serious pain, it must be because of that fever." Krackey looked at the first-aid monitor and shook his head. "You got yourself one whale of a fracture there. What happened? And what the hell were you doing, working, if you were sick like that?"

  Sick? he thought. Fever? Had he actually been delirious with fever, instead of silence-fugue? That, somehow, would be easier to take.

  /// Uh, no—sorry.

  I gave you the fever

  as an excuse for your behavior.

  What were you thinking of,

  trying to pull a robot out by its hind legs? ///

  /Thinking? Didn't you notice, I was out of my mind with fugue?/ He remembered the quarx's flashback-induced silence. /Anyway, where were you? You're supposed to help me out when these things happen./

  /// I am?

  I don't have much recollection of that.

  I suppose...I was a trifle indisposed

  for a while there. ///

  Bandicut felt movement, and realized suddenly that he was on a gurney, being rolled toward the door. Krackey was walking alongside him. The door opened and two medtechs came in and took the gurney. "You guys can't go walking out of here like that," one of them said. "Your boss said to tell you to go back to work," said the other. That was when Bandicut noticed that the miners were all still suited, except for their helmets.

  "I'll check in on you as soon as I can," Krackey promised, with a wave. "Don't worry—these guys will have you riveted back together in no time. Just take it easy and get over that flu!"

  Bandicut blanched as the techs sped him through the door and down the corridor.

  *

  "No way!" he yelled, shaking. "No nanomeds!"

  "Oh, come on, Bandicut. We can have you back at work in two days if you just let us—"

  Bandicut flailed an arm, clenching a fist in warning. He started to sit up, but a pair of strong arms grabbed him and held him down on the table. "No—nanomeds—!" he wheezed, against the pressure on his chest.

  Dr. Switzer's face came into view over him. He was a stocky man with thinning silver hair, probably in his late fifties. What the hell a man his age was doing out here on Triton, Bandicut hated to think. Probably barred from practice on all the other inhabited worlds. Switzer peered at him through his black-rimmed glasses, frowning. "Still can't forgive and forget, eh, John?"

  Bandicut grunted. "Yeh," he managed, holding back a dozen harsher answers. "I guess that's it."

  "Tsk, tsk." Switzer moved away, shaking his head. "Well... we wouldn't want to give you something that would cause you any psychological side effects, I suppose."

  Bandicut raised his head suspiciously. He didn't like the sound of that. As senior medical officer on Triton, Switzer approved or disapproved everyone's fitness-for-duty status. Medically and psychologically. "What's that mean?"

  "It doesn't mean anything, John." Switzer turned back with an alarming-looking clamping device in his hand. "I'm just trying to save you pain, that's all. Now we'll have to set that bone the old-fashioned way, and it'll take you a good four or five days to heal well enough to work. I suppose you can use the time to catch up on your reading. Jean, give him the injection, please," Switzer said brusquely.

  Bandicut swiveled his head, but the nurse had already jammed the syringe into his leg. He felt a rush of giddiness. What the hell was that? he managed to think, before the sensation swept him away like a flickering holochannel, removing him from any awareness of his surroundings.

  *

  /// May I ask a question? ///

  /What question? What's going on here? Why can't I see anything? Did you do that to me?/

  /// It was the injection.

  I merely organized the effect slightly,

  so that we could use this time to talk.

  You can't do anything else now anyway. ///

  /Thanks a bundle. Look, I need to know what they're doing to me. I don't trust them. They aren't shooting nanomeds into me, are they?/

  /// I don't think so... ///

  A small, framed image flicked on, like a monitor in one corner of a darkened control room. He could see the doctor and nurse and medtechs moving around him, stretching his leg out in some sort of tension device enclosed within a sensor array. It was fascinating to watch...until he remembered that it was his broken ankle they were stretching and twisting. Suddenly he preferred talking with the quarx. /You said you had a question?/

  /// Yes.

  What are these nanomeds?

  Why are you so afraid of them? ///

  Even in the darkness and peace of the anesthesia-gloom, he would have winced if he could have.

  /// Your reaction to them is pronounced. ///

  /Yeah,/ he muttered. /Yours would be, too, if nanomeds had done to you what they did to me./

  /// I can't...locate the memory.

  What are they? ///

  /Submicroscopic repair units—self-replicating robots the size of large molecules, programmed with medical instructions and injected into the body to make repairs. There's practically nothing they can't fix—/

  /// Then what—? ///

  /—in theory,/ he finished acidly.

  /// Oh. Then they don't always work? ///

  /No, they don't./ He tasted the bitterness and anger all over again. /They're only as good as the programming patched into them, see. And these quacks used them to try to fix some damage to my neurojack implants./ Even his mind-voice trembled as he remembered, for Charlie's benefit, what had happened...as he remembered the terrible shearing away of his ability to connect, to link in to that infinite world of...

  /// And the attempt failed? ///

  the quarx interrupted.

  /You saw it,/ he said savagely. /You saw the silence-fugue! They screwed up the nanosoft programming, and butchered the job so badly that I can never use a neuro again! Do you know what it's like to have that...taken from you...once you've.../ His words failed him, as he remembered the pain and the humiliation of losing the neurolink that had made him a highly valued survey pilot, equally skilled in the cockpit and the datanet.

  /// I believe I can imagine your pain, ///

  the quarx answered softly.

  Bandicut was startled by the answer; then he glimpsed an impression of what it was like for a quarx to lose a host, to lose his only direct connection to life, to the rest of the physical universe except through the mechanical translator, to lose the one being who provided intimacy and immediacy of thought.

  /// And my predecessor...

  helped you to bridge that gap.

  Is that correct? ///

  /Yes,/ Bandicut whispered, envisioning the link that Charlie-One had created to the datanet. /Yes, that was very...satisfying./ He swallowed, almost afraid to ask the next question. /Do you think you could—?/

  He felt the quarx's thoughts shifting and adjusting—and he realized that Charlie-Two had been growing, unfolding, remembering, and learning ever since his awakening. Perhaps this Charlie had potential, after all.

  /// I don't know. ///

  /Oh./ He sighed softly. /I guess I shouldn't have expected—/

  /// But I'd be willing to try. ///

  Bandicut felt his heart skip. It took him a moment to remember that it was as much a part of the quarx's plan as his. But that was okay. Why shouldn't the quarx benefit, too?

  /// But now,

  I think you need to pay attention to the docs.

  It looks like they're trying to wake you up. ///

  /Mm?/ He looked back at the little monitor that the quarx had given him, and saw the faces of the nurse and medtechs peering down at him. He felt a stirring of sensation, and...a lance of pain. /Owww!/

  /// Sorry.

  Wrong connection. ///

  The pain faded, and in place of it he felt the stirrings of muscular ability. His eyelids were fluttering. The small monitor image grew to fill his vision.

  "You okay there?" someone was saying.

  "Ahh�
��" he grunted. It wasn't the pain that made him grunt, it was the difficulty of regaining control over his body.

  "Take it easy," said Switzer's gravelly voice. "It's going to hurt some, until you heal."

  Bandicut nodded, his head heavy on the table. "What was that stuff?" he breathed.

  "Hah. Escalomethorphin. Worked like a charm, didn't it?" Switzer stepped up, beaming. He seemed proud of the way they had knocked him out in a matter of seconds. "We got your leg set, and you're wearing a fastract unit. If you don't mind a little pain, we can let you walk out of here." He shook a finger at Bandicut. "Just don't plan on working or doing anything hard for at least four days, maybe five."

  "I wasn't—ow! What the hell was that?" He looked down at his leg, ignoring Switzer's cackle, and saw that the nurse had just stuck him with another syringe, a big one.

  Switzer clapped him on the shoulder. "Just some hormone and mineral supplements, to help the fastract do its job. Here, try standing up." He grabbed Bandicut's right arm and motioned to one of the medtechs, who grabbed the left. "Swing your legs off the table—atta' boy."

  Bandicut nearly fainted as they spun him around and sat him up. Charlie's command over the pain pathways was uncertain, and for a second he felt a searing pain roar up his leg until it tingled in his ear. "Uh—"

  "That's it. Can you stand?"

  /// Slowly! ///

  He slid from the table with a grunt, wincing as his feet touched the floor. Charlie managed to kill the pain just as his weight came down on both legs, so it was mainly the anticipation of pain, rather than pain itself, that made him shudder. Still, he was grateful for the low Triton gravity.

  "Okay?" asked Switzer.

  "Yeh," he whispered.

  "Good. Here's an instruction sheet on the fastract." Switzer waved a paper at him. "You've got to keep it at the right tension level, or you'll be back here in even worse shape. And no centrifuge until I say so."

  "Right." What do you think I am, a moron?

  "Just follow those instructions, and take these—" Switzer handed him a huge bottle of pills "—and come back in two days so I can see how you're doing." He hesitated. "Sooner—only if you have to."

  Bandicut nodded, glancing around at the otherwise empty infirmary offices. He wasn't exactly monopolizing the doctor's time. He recalled that Switzer was rumored to spend extensive periods of leisure time in the VR facilities. Some sort of golf game, apparently. "Right," he answered. "Only if I have to. Wouldn't want to impose upon your services—"

  Switzer's gaze darkened almost imperceptibly.

  /// Are you baiting him now?

  This is a very interesting dynamic. ///

  Bandicut sighed. /Oh, shut up, will you?/ To the doctor, he said, "Just joking, you know."

  "Yes," said Switzer, who clearly understood exactly what he'd meant, and didn't much like it. He squinted at Bandicut and said, "I wonder if we should have you come back in for some neurological retesting. I wouldn't want to think that you hadn't completely recovered from your prior...unfortunate...accident. Perhaps we should make sure that there's nothing funny going on." He tapped the side of his head meaningfully.

  /// What's he mean by that? ///

  Charlie asked in a panic.

  "What do you mean by that?" Bandicut asked simultaneously.

  "Well, you were picked up with a temperature of a hundred and four. By the time you were rolled in here, you were down to one-zero-two. Now you're back to ninety-eight point seven." Switzer shook his head, turning away with his clipboard. "That's just not natural."

  /// Oh. ///

  Bandicut shifted his attention. /You did that, too? You shut it off that fast?/

  /// I, well...

  I was trying to give you a cover for the accident.

  I didn't think you needed it anymore,

  once we were on our way here. ///

  Bandicut nodded—and stopped the movement of his head when he remembered he was nodding to the quarx, not the doctor. /I suppose there's no way you could have known./

  /// I still have much to learn, ///

  the quarx admitted.

  Switzer turned back, glaring. "You still here? Go on, get out of here. Go take in...whatever it is you like to do." He coughed and hurried into his office, leaving Bandicut standing, wobbling slightly, with the nurse.

  With a faint smile at the nurse's bemused expression, he turned and hobbled with a low-gravity bounce out of the infirmary.

  *

  /I think I want a beer,/ he said, working his way toward the rec lounge.

  The quarx was silent for a moment, before saying,

  /// I find I have some pharmacological data

  in my memory.

  I'm not sure that it would be a good idea,

  with that medication you're on. ///

  Bandicut frowned. /Can't you just take care of any side effects?/

  /// I'm not a miracle worker.

  I'm just an alien. ///

  /Ha ha./ Bandicut chuckled, then realized that the quarx had not meant the statement as a joke. /Well, okay—if not a beer—what, then?/

  /// Well...at some point,

  I'd like to see that game again.

  EineySteiney pool. ///

  /All right./

  /// But first,

  how about taking me to the place

  where my predecessor... ///

  /Yes?/

  /// ...linked you in. ///

  Bandicut smiled and hobbled a little more quickly down the corridor.

  Chapter 15

  Datafry

  Settling into a booth just off the lounge, Bandicut put on the headset and waited for the quarx to begin. /Well?/

  Charlie hesitated.

  /// Actually,

  I don't seem to remember how he did it.

  Do you? ///

  /Me? Hell, no. I didn't understand it when he was doing it./

  /// Well, did he say anything about

  how he did it? ///

  Bandicut thought back. /He said he was...altering the neural matrix of my brain. He said it was something like the way he talked to me...directly in my brain./

  /// Ah. ///

  /Does that help?/

  /// I'm not sure. ///

  He felt the quarx scrabbling in his mind, trying to fit together fragments of memory.

  /// Wait, here's something.

  Not a direct memory, but a hint.

  Altering the matrix—?

  Wait...I think I've got it. ///

  Bandicut stared at the console, imagining the quarx's face peering back at him.

  /// May I try? ///

  /Go ahead. You have the con./

  /// Stand by... ///

  He nodded and closed his eyes. Nothing happened, and he was about to question the quarx, when he was startled by an eruption of sparks in his closed eyes.

  >

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

  >>

  >>>>

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>——>>>>>>

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>——>>>>>>

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>——>>>>>>

  >>

  >>>>>>

  >>>

  >

  ——>———

  >

  He shuddered at the jarring entry.

  A burst of fireworks expanded in his vision, then crystallized into a network, which hung against the darkness for a heartstopping instant. Then it melted and drained like rivulets of glowing water toward him, into his vision, his eyes, his brain, his consciousness...

  *

  For several minutes, streams of silvery data branched and flowed and shifted, like mercury flowing over an uneven surface. The quarx dived into the datastream, carrying Bandicut faster than he could follow with his thoughts. He was grateful for the surge and tug of the neurolink, but Charlie was taking the data far too fast for him to follow. The quarx darted from stream to stream, dipping and sampling, siphoning information that left Band
icut dizzily bewildered.

  Finally he asked, /Do you know what you're looking for?/

  The quarx hummed distractedly.

  /// Not specifically.

  I have an intuition that he might have

  left something for me. ///

  /Left something? Like what?/

  /// I wish I knew.

  If he knew he was dying,

  he might have anticipated this situation. ///

  /You think he left you some kind of instructions?/

  /// I would have, in his place. ///

  Bandicut watched the datastream blur. What could Charlie-One have left in the datanet that wouldn't be incriminating? The quarx was now rummaging through Earth history files. A minute later he shifted to a summation of the mathematical proofs of the last two centuries. He riffled through them with blinding speed.

  /// Nothing.

  I find nothing.

  You're going to have to help me. ///

  /Okay. How?/

  /// Well...there's a lot about him

  that you know better than I.

  What did he like?

  What were his concerns?

  What interested him? ///

  /Well...the mission, of course./ Bandicut shrugged mentally. /Have you put the pieces of that together yet?/

  /// We have to stop something from hitting Earth.

  It's quite urgent. ///

  /Right. Was that from your memory or mine?/

  /// A little of both.

  And you have some essential data in your head

  which we have to relay to the translator. ///

  /Right./ That little detail had almost slipped his mind. /Can you—do you see the data okay? Is it still there?/

  /// I haven't actually found it yet,

  But that doesn't mean it isn't there.

  What else—about Charlie, I mean?

  Maybe not related to the mission. ///

  Bandicut thought. /Well—he was a big TV nut. He loved the old-time stuff. Was always quoting stupid lines at me. Is that what you mean?/