Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) Page 22

  We're in this together. ///

  Bandicut set the rover into motion. Napoleon bounded alongside on its gangly grasshopper legs. When they reached the easternmost corner of the assigned sector, fifteen minutes later, he brought the buggy to a halt. They had four minutes to kill before the last of the overhead satellite eyes dropped below the horizon. Bandicut opened his visor and ate a chocolate bar. He tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach. He knew it had to be done, but he was starting to feel like a criminal.

  /// Time. Let's go. ///

  Bandicut opened the bubble canopy and climbed out. Napoleon had already clambered up onto the side of the rover and plugged in its probe. As soon as Bandicut stepped clear, the robot drove off, hanging from the rover like a monkey. /That thing better be back here on time,/ Bandicut said uneasily.

  /// It will. Let's go.

  Bearing zero-five-four. ///

  Bandicut sprang ahead in the one-thirteenth gravity and loped across the uneven icy surface, across the invisible STOP HERE line, into the unauthorized sector where he and Charlie had first met.

  *

  /// Right here. ///

  Panting, he came to a stop. He had been jogging for ten minutes at the most, but it felt more like an hour. It wasn't easy, stumping across that distance with a cast inside his left suit leg; it would have been impossible in Earth gravity. He peered around over the frozen nitrogen and methane surface. /Is this it?/ It looked vaguely familiar; but a lot of places out here looked like a lot of other places. And the last time he was here, the translator had been busy rearranging the landscape.

  The quarx didn't answer. But an instant later, he felt his feet sinking slowly into the ice. Then he was falling, and he was suddenly aware of sparkles of light whirling around him, and his vision and the rest of his consciousness went cottony and vague...

  *

  He blinked in darkness, and found just enough light to see that he was standing directly in front of the translator—the same machine, with its pulsing, squirming, not-quite-solid black and iridescent spheres, which had started him on this crazy path. He felt that he was dreaming, but knew he wasn't. The translator looked even more alive than before—this thing that belonged, not to the alien Rohengen who had occupied Triton millions of years before humanity, but to some other race lost even deeper in time and space. Bandicut felt that he was underground in the ice cavern, but saw nothing to confirm it; his vision was completely dominated by the spinning globes moving around each other and through each other.

  He felt a palpable and urgent sense of purpose in the translator. He also saw something now that he had not before, a curious point of darkness floating inside one of the iridescent spheres, like a tiny shadow in the light. It caught his attention, because it did not seem to be just a fleck of physical matter, but more like a pure geometric point. The word singularity flickered in his mind, and he had no idea if that was what it was; but even as he was wondering, it caught his gaze with a wrench. He felt his vision telescoping down into that point of blackness. His breath escaped with an explosive rush.

  He was falling into a microscopic universe of darkness, and deep within that universe, he saw dancing fire—and found it disturbing to look at. These were not chemical flames, but something far more fundamental, something burning and fusing deep in the uttermost building blocks of space-time...and whatever it was, it was bright, painfully so. And yet it was not the brightness so much as the strangeness that tore at his eyes. He wanted to call out to Charlie, but could not. It felt as though he were peering into the heart of a quantum black hole; nothing here quite fit anything that he knew or understood. It was almost as if he were being pulled into some tightly compacted dimension of reality, a corner of the universe that the human eye was never intended to see.

  —It wasn't—

  whispered a voice, which might have been the quarx's, or his own imagination. It was suddenly lost in a rising babble of voices, chaotic voices, speaking no language he knew, but reverberating in his mind, coming from within, coming from the fire, coming from God knew what source within this quarxian madness.

  He was suddenly feverish with a rush of knowledge flowing into his mind, carried on the tide of voices. He was faint with it, he was dizzy and bewildered; he didn't know if he could hold or comprehend it all, and he could only hope that the quarx could. Charlie...was Charlie still here?

  Images were building within him, images formed by knowledge gathering like atoms around a nucleating body, and soon they would crystalize abruptly into a vast clarity of—

  —(what?)—

  —you will see—

  —the chaotic movement, the danger—

  —a ticking molecular pendulum, marking time—

  —a glimpse of tumbling rock and ice, perturbed from its orbit, far from the sun—

  —falling inward, across endless space; hurtling close to the sun and then away—

  —(is this?)—

  —yes—

  —a glimpse of a blue-and-white planet, floating serene in the darkness, a living world—

  —the comet rising like a tremendous curving fastball, streaking toward the planet; and striking like a cosmic hammer, and erupting with—

  —fire—

  —fire!—

  The fire seemed to spin around him, or he was spinning, and he felt himself caught in a transformation of time and space, and for a terrifying moment he thought this was nothing but silence-fugue, not alien wisdom or knowledge at all...except that now the previous images vanished and he saw a figure of coruscating fire, alive and aware, in the heart of the darkness, and he could not tell if it was the quarx or the translator, or both. Before he could ask, three blazing points of light erupted from the figure of fire and spun toward him, circling into tight orbits around his head, and then dropping into his pockets.

  —these you will need—

  He tried to focus on the points of light, but could not. Something new was building around him like a pressure wave, and with it was a growing sensation of unreality, and he felt himself wanting to scream, but he could not. He opened his mouth and darkness billowed out, and it was filled with a lance of fire—

  —and he glimpsed cavern walls flashing and shimmering—

  —and he heard a quarx crying out—

  —and the darkness shrank down to a penetrating point—

  —and spun away—

  —and everything blurred—

  *

  He thought he heard a deep gong ringing in the darkness, but this darkness was of a different sort. It was the darkness of space, and there was a blue planet arching over his head. He blinked dizzily, trying to stand. He saw ice under his feet, and realized that he was standing on the surface right where he had begun this madness...

  /// Don't faint! ///

  the quarx barked.

  He caught himself stumbling. Whatever he had just been through, he felt as drained as he had this morning, after his healing.

  /// Start walking—to your left!

  Breathe, John—breathe! ///

  He gulped air and shuddered, chilled to the bone. He had the presence of mind to call out to his suit for a system-check, and was reassured to hear that his life support was fine.

  /// You've got to keep moving.

  We meet Napoleon in nine minutes. ///

  Napoleon...yes. He rasped in a lungful of air, trying to remember.

  /// Do you understand what just happened? ///

  /Not...no./ He started to stumble and caught himself before pitching over onto the cryogenic surface.

  /// Keep walking.

  It'll help you recover.

  You did well. ///

  /I did?/ he whispered, moving his feet like lead weights, one after the other. Slowly, mindlessly, he pushed himself to a cautious jogging speed. He thought he remembered visions of...it was so hard to remember, like a dream, dancing tantalizingly at the edge of his memory. He knew it would come back, if only he could...focus. But he couldn't f
ocus while running.

  /// You've just experienced a connection

  not meant for corporeals.

  I was afraid we'd lose you.

  But you held together.

  We got what we needed. ///

  He followed the gentle directional nudges from the quarx, sensing that Charlie didn't want him to try to comprehend it all now, but just to recover first, and get back to the rover. But he thought he would go mad if he didn't recapture what had just happened. He was up to a full, loping run now, panting steadily, letting the quarx direct his feet as he ran toward their rendezvous with the robot, all the time trying desperately to focus on the memory that was rising now toward the surface...

  It was a planet, blue and white, Earth, homeworld, floating serene and vulnerable through the vast eternal night of space; it was oblivious to the motions of certain bodies from the edge of the solar system, one of which was now tumbling inward at hellbent velocity.

  He stumbled on a ripple of ice and pitched forward, gasping. He pushed himself back up to his hands and knees, the image quaking with crystalline clarity in his mind:

  The Earth burning.

  /// John, don't stop.

  You've got to keep moving. ///

  He struggled to get up, but his legs and arms felt like putty. He looked up at blue Neptune over his head and saw another blue planet, its atmosphere clouding over with smoke and ash.

  /// John, please— ///

  /Charlie—/ he gasped /—is that really going to happen?/

  /// Yes, if we don't stop it.

  It's closer than I imagined. ///

  /When?/ he croaked.

  /// Impact in forty-seven days.

  Now get up and run, damn it!

  RUN! ///

  Chapter 22

  Virtual Truths

  The rover came over the hill to the north, kicking up a cloud of ice particles as it sped down the slope. At any other time, Bandicut would have been terrified by the sight of the robot driving his buggy that way, hanging off the side like a remora fish, the buggy slewing to come straight toward him before braking to a stop. Now, he was simply too numb to care.

  "John Bandicut, survey strips Three A through Five B are completed. What further needs do you have?" Napoleon squawked, raising itself up on the cowling of the rover as Bandicut climbed back in. It looked as though it were trying to peer into the driver's compartment to see what he was planning to do next.

  /Charlie?/ he asked, buckling himself in.

  /// Place your hand on the robot, please. ///

  Bandicut reached out and touched Napoleon. He found the gesture oddly calming, like petting a dog. /Are we releasing it now?/

  /// Yes.

  Recon Thirty-nine,

  terminate and delete special programming Beta.

  Confirm. ///

  "Termination confirmed," squawked the robot. "John Bandicut, do you have further needs?"

  "Ah...negative, Nappy. Go ahead and take up your regular station, I guess."

  As the robot unjacked and let itself back down onto the moon's surface, Bandicut suddenly realized that, according to his work orders, he was to stay out here for three more hours before returning to base. He didn't think he could stand to wait that long. /Charlie, if that's really true, about the comet—/

  /// It is. ///

  /—then we've got to get back! Do you have all the orbital data? Is that what all that gibberish was, from the translator?/

  /// Some of it.

  And yes, I can give you the figures,

  but they're a complex interaction.

  I'll be able to show you better in the VR room. ///

  /Never mind showing me. Can you show the people who can do something about it?/

  /// John—remember?

  There's only one person

  who can do something about it.

  And that's you. ///

  Bandicut swallowed, his blood rushing. /Charlie, what can I do? We've got to notify somebody!/

  /// We've been through this before.

  Your planet has no defense.

  Not against this. ///

  Bandicut had trouble catching his breath. /No, but—what about—fusion warheads—?/ He was clenching and unclenching his fists. Napoleon was looking back at him from the top of the knoll.

  /// Perhaps you should start driving.

  I'm afraid, John, that warheads are not the answer.

  It is likely they would only split the comet,

  and make its effects all the more devastating. ///

  /But we should at least warn people,/ Bandicut whispered.

  /// Please start driving.

  Your people would not believe a warning from us.

  The comet is behind the sun, hidden

  from the only stations that might confirm its orbit.

  Please start driving. ///

  Bandicut snapped the joystick forward, and the buggy lurched ahead, wheels churning on nitrogen ice. "Exo-op control, Unit Echo," he croaked, pressing the long-range comm. "I'm coming in early. This ankle cast is killing me. Copy?"

  "COPY, ECHO. HI, BANDIE. SHALL I ALERT, AH, ANYONE IN PARTICULAR?" answered the cheerful voice of Georgia Patwell.

  Bandicut sighed. "Negative, control. See you soon." At least he was grateful for Dr. Switzer's casual treatment. If he hadn't had an excuse to come in early, he would have gone crazy for the next three hours.

  He thought, actually, that he might go crazy anyway.

  *

  /// Don't forget the daughter-stones. ///

  /Eh?/ An image flickered, and he remembered the three points of light from the translator flying to him and dropping into his suit pocket. /What was that, anyway?/ he asked, driving into the hangar area.

  /// Daughter components of the translator.

  They're essential for what we have to do.

  Keep them with you at all times. ///

  /Uh, okay./ Rolling to a stop, he secured the buggy and hurried inside. After dressing, he reached into the suit outer pocket to find three small, translucent stones. They looked like glass marbles, one obsidian, one ruby red, one glittering white. He thought he saw a faint sparkle of light glowing within the white one, but it died immediately, and there was no other sign that they were anything other than glass stones. /What should I do with them?/ he asked, rolling them in the palm of his hand. He immediately envisioned dropping them and watching them disappear under various immovable objects.

  /// They'll stay in your pocket

  if you direct your thoughts to them,

  asking them to.

  I'll tell you more about them later.

  Let's go. ///

  Bandicut shrugged and dropped the stones into his pocket. Then he grabbed a terminal to submit his field report, and called Switzer's office to say that he wanted the cast taken off. He was told to come by in two hours. Perfect. He headed straight for the lounge.

  Locking himself into a VR room, he switched on a solar-system realtime program and perched on a stool, surrounded by a panoply of stars, with a glowing sun floating in space some distance away. At Charlie's request, he put on a neurojack headset and adjusted the controls until all nine of the planets were enlarged enough for their features to be recognizable in the dark interplanetary gulf—the outer planets with their cloud-bands and rings, Mars a rusty pebble, Earth a blue-and-white gem. He dimmed the stars, so that they hung in the background like an infinite tapestry, while allowing him to see clearly the movements of the planets.

  /// Splendid.

  The translator can make do with raw numbers.

  But this makes it much easier to visualize,

  doesn't it? ///

  /I guess so. What exactly are we visualizing?/

  /// In a manner of speaking...EineySteiney pool.

  I'm downloading the orbital data now.

  Waiting for the VR program to process it... ///

  EineySteiney pool? Bandicut thought.

  /// There we go.

  Fir
st I want you to see the orbits of

  the planets and all significant tracked objects

  as they were several years ago.

  This is based upon the information

  we took from your library. ///

  The image dimmed; the planets shifted positions in their orbits as the program made the time-based adjustments, and there was a momentary blurring of the myriad of tiny points of light that represented known asteroids, comets, and satellites. When everything became clear again, the overall picture looked much the same.

  /// Now—I want you to see the gaps

  in your routine observations,

  based upon the locations of your

  telescope and radar stations

  which would be tracking the movements

  of small bodies. ///

  The holoimage was suddenly crisscrossed with swaths of soft illumination, emanating from various points on the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and several other stations. Some of the swaths were moving. A significant portion of the solar system remained in shadow, however—more than half the sky.

  /// A century or two ago,

  Earth-based amateurs might have spotted the danger.

  That was before air and light pollution

  made it impossible.

  Now let's subtract the coverage

  from two solar-orbiting sats

  that are no longer being monitored. ///

  /Wait,/ Bandicut protested, as two swaths of light blinked off at locations a third of the way around the sun from Earth. /Are those sats really out of service?/

  /// As far as I know, they're still functioning.

  But their transmissions have been turned off.

  Because of budget cuts,

  no one was analyzing the data. ///

  /Well, damn it—/

  /// I'm just laying out the facts.

  Now, look here— ///

  Bandicut watched, as the quarx rearranged the solar system. Everything blurred, then stabilized. A small pointer winked on and tracked a tiny point of light as it drifted through the dark emptiness far outside the orbit of Pluto. /What's that?/

  /// That's your planet's nemesis,

  a dark comet as it was some years ago,