A Night Without Stars (77 page)

“Er, I've got something here,” he announced over the general link. The others accessed his vision feed. The indentations were slim rectangles about seventy-five centimeters long and ten wide, always running in two sets twenty centimeters apart. They were everywhere—curving around in wide spirals, running over themselves so often it was impossible to follow a continuous line. Some were worn down and barely recognizable, while others were sharply defined.

“They look like caterpillar tracks,” Kysandra said.

Ry climbed off the quad-kart and squatted down to study the marks. They had the same temperature as the rest of the desert. When he prodded one of them with a finger, it was just as solid as the frozen sand it'd been pressed into. “I don't think these are thirty-five thousand years old,” he said uneasily. “Not even the older ones.” His gaze was drawn to the cliff, now just a kilometer away. It wasn't high, maybe seventy meters, its crinkled face a dull gray-brown with some odd white marbling running in jagged patterns at steep angles.

“Ry, stay where you are,” Paula said. “I'm coming over.”

“Me, too,” Kysandra said. “You might need some backup.”

“I'm coming, too,” Florian said.

Ry told his u-shadow to switch on his infrared function, changing the world to weird false-color petals. The air drifting along the cliff was a couple of degrees higher than anywhere else. He got back on the quad-kart and began driving toward it.

“Ry,” Paula said. “What are you doing? I told you to stay where you are.”

“I just need to get a bit closer. There's some kind of odd thermal activity around the cliff.”

“Okay, but just stop and observe from where you are, please.”

Ry braked the quad-kart resentfully.
I'm an astronaut. Venturing into the unknown is why I exist. Why can't she just let me get on with it?
He had a sudden depressing thought that the Commonwealth, for all its magnificent achievements and power, was run by timid bureaucrats, unable to justify any risk. Another thought was fast behind:
Uracus, I left my maser rifle back in the dome.
Because Macule was a dead world; everybody knew that. Right?

His retinas zoomed in on the cliff. “I can see some caves. I think the warm air is venting out of them.”

“Do the tracks lead to the caves?” Paula asked.

“I can't tell. There's a big shelf of naked rock along the base of the cliff.” Ry peered forward as the gusts of hot air from one of the cave mouths became warmer and denser, its velocity increasing in tandem. “There's some kind of pressure surge from one of the caves.”

“You mean something's forcing the air out?” Paula asked. “That's only going to happen if—”

“Oh, crud!” Ry grunted. A hemisphere of dull metal, an easy four meters in diameter, was rising out of the cave. That was just the head of a ten-meter-long cylinder that rode on stumpy triangular undercarriage mechanisms—three down each side. They had five fat metal wheels apiece, which rolled over the stone with loud grating sounds. The first cylindrical section was connected to a second via a complicated-looking articulated junction. A third section followed.

Ry turned the quad-kart around in a tight circle. By the time he was pointing back at the domes, all five sections of the machine had emerged. The rear two cylinders were ribbed by tarnished silver pipes that glowed brightly in infrared. His suit sensors detected a worrying amount of radiation squirting out of the metal. Hatches on the forward hemisphere clanged back, and small elaborate instruments telescoped out, cogs and heavy-duty chains whirring around to propel their sliding rails. Many components on their tips spun up or began scanning back and forth. Ry didn't think they were weapons. A fan of green laserlight swept over him.

“Get out of there!” Paula said.

“Already gone.” Ry ordered the quad-kart wheels to accelerate hard. He took off over the gently undulating desert, the deep tread on the tires kicking up plumes of icy sand.

Behind him, the five segments of the Macule machine paused. Latches snapped up on all of its triangular undercarriage mechanisms. High-pressure hoses trembled and pistons whined with mechanical strain. The triangles rotated, moving the five-wheel base off the ground so twin caterpillar-track segments slapped down. The locking latches slammed around. Ry's sensors informed him the track segments measured seventy-five centimeters long, ten wide.

“I don't think that was good,” Florian said.

“No crudding kidding,” Ry snarled. The quad-kart had reached thirty kph, and it was taking a
lot
of concentration to steer around the medium-sized rocks. His force field was already on at full strength.

He heard a great many engines start whining. Gears crunched as they engaged. The Macule machine started to roll forward, picking up speed fast. It didn't have to slalom about to avoid rocks; the tracks simply crushed them deeper into the sand. When it came to a larger outcrop, it rode over it, the segments undulating about their junctions, creating a lengthy ripple effect.

Ry realized it was catching up and ordered more power to the quad-kart's axle engines.

“We've expanded the wormhole generator's force field to cover the domes,” Demitri said. “I don't think your pursuer has the ability to break through. For all it's impressive, it is rather primitive.”

“What in Uracus is it?” Ry demanded. “Is it Commonwealth?”

“Unlikely,” Demitri said. “It appears to be nuclear-powered, and its reactor is lacking the normal level of shielding humans build in.”

Ry could see the domes a kilometer ahead now. The temptation to throttle up further was almost overwhelming. But a quick calculation showed he should arrive fifty meters ahead of the Macule machine if he just kept to this speed. An exovision map showed him the other quad-karts speeding for the domes.

Then Paula turned onto a course that would bring her toward him.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“A simple test,” she replied. “Demitri, optical refraction on the force field, please. Let our visitor know what it's up against.”

Ry stared at the domes as the force field shimmered all around them; it was as if the sunlight suddenly became solid. A dull pearl hemisphere materialized, covering the geodesic domes completely. For some reason, that solidity gave Ry a little burst of confidence. He checked the pursuing machine. “It hasn't slowed down,” he said.

“Interesting,” Paula said.

“Interesting?” He was five hundred meters from the protected domes now, and he could see Paula's quad-kart charging toward him from the east, a thin sand contrail stretching out behind her.

“Yes. Keep going,” she told him.

Now, Ry decided, wasn't the time to go all stubborn and argue. He focused on the ground, steering with small controlled flicks to the handlebars. Paula was closing fast. She braked hard, tires churning up a flurry of icy sand. A moment later, Ry raced past her.

His sensors showed her jumping down off the saddle. Then her force field did the same refraction trick, turning her into a plain white profile, like a statue devoid of any detail. She stood squarely on the tire tracks Ry's quad-kart had left and raised a hand, palm out toward the Macule machine.

“You can't be serious,” Ry muttered. His u-shadow automatically reduced speed; he simply didn't want to miss this.

The huge Macule machine was only a hundred meters from Paula, who stood resolute. Its caterpillar tracks surmounted any obstacle, large or small.

“Paula?” Kysandra queried. “Do you need more firepower?”

“I shouldn't. Not if there's sentience controlling it.”

Ry had stopped concentrating on the path ahead. He just watched Paula. All he could think was:
So this is what it's like when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.

The Macule machine thundered onward. “Are you going to shoot it?” Ry asked. The disruptor effect that Commonwealth biononics could produce was formidable, but the juggernaut rushing toward her had the inertia of Uracus.

Just as he was about to turn around and charge back to Paula—not that he had the faintest idea if that would be of any help—a tortured screeching sound came from the Macule machine as chunky metal components were abruptly overstressed. He saw the caterpillar tracks on all its triangular undercarriage mechanisms lock rigid, plowing up huge waves of sand and stones as they suddenly dug deep into the ground.

“No way!” Ry grunted. The machine was skidding along the frozen desert, its five sections waving from side to side. For one moment he thought the whole thing would roll over, but it just kept slowing.

Amazingly, Paula didn't move. She did lower her hand as soon as the caterpillar tracks locked, but that was all.
Why doesn't she just jump aside in case it can't stop in time?
He held his breath, wincing, almost unable to watch.

The Macule machine came to a full halt, its hemispherical nose seven meters short of Paula. Some of the slender instrument rails were hanging over her. Oiled chains and small hydraulic actuators moved along them, turning the instruments to align on the spectral figure shining defiantly below them.

Ry's sensors picked up a multispectrum signal transmitted from Paula. “Commonwealth first-contact interpretation package,” his u-shadow said. “It allows any reasonably competent processor to establish base equivalents and facilitate the subsequent exchange of vocabulary and grammatical constructs.”

“Right,” Ry murmured.

He sat on the quad-kart's saddle, facing the strange tableau. The wait wasn't long. Within fifteen minutes, one of the revolving instruments slowed. It started transmitting.

Thirty minutes later, a preliminary lexis had been established. Ry observed in fascination as Paula began to talk to the alien machine.

“My designation is Paula Myo. I am a human. I have traveled here from this planet.” A simple file containing a diagram of the solar system was sent, with Bienvenido bracketed.

“You are new,” the machine sent in reply. “You cannot be a Zone Unit.”

“I am new to this world, yes. I am not a threat to you. What is your designation?”

“I am Zone43 Unit976. One of my functions is to guard our boundary. You are intruding.”

“I apologize. I repeat, I am not a threat. We mean you no harm. We did not know anything was still alive on this planet.”

“Many Units re-create. There are fewer now.”

“Do you mean Units survived the nuclear war?” Paula asked.

“Units were created after the extinction war to safeguard the Kromal >Macule sentient species<.”

“Are you a biological entity?”

“Kromal were biological. All Units contain Kromal-derived orts. Continuation of Kromal exists in this form. All Units exist to facilitate continuation.”

“What is the end point of this continuation? What is your goal?”

“Units exist to continue Kromal safely until this world is reborn.”

“When will it be reborn?”

“We do not know. Unit creators designed us to endure until the radiation from the war has fallen to a level where biological life can survive again. It has not yet reached that level.”

“Really? I may be able to help.”

Basement level six under the Opole PSR office only had four cells. It hadn't been used in the living memory of any current PSR officer, although it was maintained with the grudging routine of any government facility. One short corridor served all four cells, its dark brick walls leaking white salt crystals out of the mortar. There was a cage door at the foot of the stairs where armed guards were stationed along with the two floor chiefs. The steel cell doors themselves weighed nearly half a ton and needed two separate keys to unlock them. They all had a spyhole.

When Chaing and Yaki arrived, eight officers were clustered around the metal door of cell one, taking it in turns to peer through at the new inmate. They straightened up and saluted guiltily as the two floor chiefs greeted the director. Yaki maintained a disapproving silence as they all filed out sheepishly when the cage door was opened. The floor chiefs put their keys in the door of cell one, and turned them simultaneously.

“Is the recording equipment working?” Yaki asked as the locking mechanism clunked.

“Yes, ma'am,” the senior chief said. “It's all been checked and confirmed by the electrical manager herself. Everything is in duplicate.”

“Thank you. Open the door, please.”

The senior chief tugged hard on the handle, and the big door slowly swung back.

Roxwolf was sitting at the sturdy wooden table in the middle of the room, facing the door. A handcuff was clamped around his human wrist, securing him to a heavy iron ring in the center of the table. A shackle bracelet was holding his human ankle to a similar ring set in the floor underneath the table. The guards obviously hadn't been sure about the restraints working on his ginger-furred animal limbs; instead they'd taken to binding his mismatched legs together. The upper portion of the arm limb was contained in a long leather sheath, with chains holding it immobile against his torso.

“Director Yaki, welcome,” Roxwolf said in a gurgling voice.

Chaing couldn't take his eyes off the fangs filling the creature's mouth—how sharp they were, how the jaw muscles bulged. He didn't want to be in the same building as that mouth, let alone locked in the same room. All he could think about was that mouth eating, shredding meat as if it were wet bread—and what kind of meat.

“Did your officers enjoy peeking at the big scary monster? You should charge people for the privilege. It would double the amount of illegal kickbacks you acquire from your various commercial rackets. And Captain Chaing, the great Stonal's representative on Bienvenido, congratulations on your no doubt imminent promotion. How long you will enjoy it, is of course another matter entirely.”

“Longer than you'll live to see,” Chaing said as he and Yaki sat in front of the table.

“And yet, here I am: alive. If you wanted me dead, then a quick bullet to the brain from your pistol when you captured me would have sufficed. Good work, by the way. I'm impressed amid my depression.”

“Patterns,” Chaing said. “The downfall of us all. You always use underground escape routes.”

“I will make an effort to remember that.”

“We need information from you,” Yaki said.

Roxwolf stretched his lips wide, exposing more of his fangs. “Of course you do.”

He knows how disconcerting that is for humans,
Chaing thought.
So he must believe he still has some advantage.

A moment of silence stretched out. Then, “Oh,” Roxwolf said, sounding mildly disappointed. “I was waiting for you to give me the ‘hard way or easy way' speech.”

Yaki tipped her head to one side and fixed him with a faint smile. “You'll give us what we want, or you'll die. Good enough?”

“And after I give you what you want, you'll kill me anyway. So why don't you just go right ahead?”

“If you wanted to die, you had plenty of opportunities to make a break for freedom while we were bringing you in. The assault team is good, but you're a scary beast right out of Uracus itself; one of them would have pulled the trigger.”

“Quite right, Director. So instead of using the stick, would you like to show me the carrot?”

“Carrots and sticks are for donkeys.”

“Ah, donkeys. They taste nice, but not as nice as you.”

“What are you, exactly?” Chaing asked, pleased he could put up a cold wall of indifference to the creature's goading.

“A mistake,” Roxwolf grunted, and looked pointedly at his leather-bound arm. “A very literal half-breed.”

“So you are Faller? That's where your sympathies lie?”

“I am useful to them. I take risks they dare not, so they allow me to live—for a price.”

“You have a price, then?” Yaki asked.

“Everybody has a price, Director. You should know that.”

“What will your cooperation cost us?”

“That depends. What is it you wish to know?”

“The locations of every nest you know of.”

“That is expensive information.”

“How valuable is your life?”

“Very. But you haven't shown me you can guarantee that.”

“What guarantee are you looking for?”

A long serpentine tongue flickered between Roxwolf's fangs as he exhaled gently. “Full citizenship, granted publically, and legal immunity from all my past crimes.”

“I can ask for that,” Yaki said, sounding slightly puzzled. “I'm not sure if the government will grant it.”

“Of course. As a gesture of good faith, I am willing to give you the current location of the five largest nests in Opole.”

“Five?”

“Yes.”

Yaki glanced at Chaing. He knew exactly what she was thinking.
There are more than five?

“I can agree to that,” she said. “At the very least, you won't die today.”

“Good to know. Oh, there's one other thing.”

Yaki stiffened. “Yes?”

“The Commonwealth girl, Essie.”

“Paula,” Chaing said. “Her name is Paula.”

“Interesting.” Roxwolf nodded as if agreeing to some inner conversation. “I will also require Paula to agree to my terms.”

“We have no way of getting into contact with her.”

“Now, that's not entirely true, is it, Captain? In fact, you're trying rather hard, aren't you? Section seven has been pressuring every radical Eliter they know of, demanding she get in touch again. I'm assuming that has something to do with the machine in the basement.”

“The what?”

“Ry Evine used that phrase as his proof of identity to the polar Liberty mission, who in turn convinced the prime minister—or ex–prime minister, I should say. It was an intriguing conversation—supposedly private. But if your astronauts will broadcast direct from orbit you must expect people to overhear them.”

“All right,” Chaing said. “If she gets in touch with us, we can ask. But I'd like to know why. Why do you need her to agree to your request?”

“I met her, as you know. A formidable little thing, even back then. Now she is just plain terrifying. It's the potential she represents, you understand. The nests risked everything to use your atomic weapons against her, and we still don't know if they succeeded.”

“So you think she'd kill you?”

“Not if we have a deal. She was open to a deal even after I tried to blow her brains out.” He shrugged. “I failed, of course—which gives me enormous respect for her.”

“I'm not sure I believe you,” Yaki said. “But we will add it to your demands.”

“People in a position of strength make demands. I merely offer negotiating points to keep myself alive.”

“So you'll just roll over so easily?” Chaing said.

“You have no idea what is about to happen on this world, do you?”

“The great Faller Apocalypse? I know.”

“You don't. You don't even know our numbers.”

“You've taken over every landmass apart from Lamaran and Byarn. I can only assume you have bred a formidable population base.”

“Touché. I suppose the seibears gave that away?”

“Yes. And you've got detailed plans how to disrupt our society; the raid on our nukes showed us that.”

“Indeed. And the Trees?”

Chaing fought against turning to look at Yaki; it would have shown weakness. “What about the Trees?”

“This is a war for total supremacy. There can only be one survivor. I know you think you understand that intellectually, but in reality you are blind.”

“What about the Trees?”

“The Apocalypse—
your
Apocalypse—will begin when they fly down from the Ring to low orbit. You see, your cities and farms and railways and industry are not part of Faller culture. The Fallers do not need such things. They are spoils that will not be claimed by the victor.”

“Then what will the Trees do?” Yaki demanded in a strained voice.

“Low orbit will allow them to refine their aim. Every egg they have will come crashing down on your buildings, your bridges, your dams. And there are tens of thousands of eggs growing up there. Their shells are engineered at a molecular level to withstand any impact, no matter what it is they land on. Every half-important structure you have ever built will be reduced to ruin in a matter of hours. Humans will have nothing left to defend. Millions of you will die before the nests even begin their assault. Survivors will be rounded up and either eaten or eggsumed. You'll see.”

“Oh, crudding Giu,” Chaing whispered. “But why tell us? Why warn us? If what you say is true, the Fallers are going to win no matter what we do.”

“And if they do, I will probably lose. I am a realist above all else. Now that you have captured me I cannot deal with them, not from this prison cell; the weapons I was supposed to supply will not be delivered. I was treated with contempt before, and now you, Captain Chaing, have condemned me. Paula's protection is my only chance of survival. And I want to survive. That's all I've ever wanted.”

“But…You just told us it's useless. We don't stand a chance.”

“You don't. But
she
does. If anyone can defeat the Fallers, it's Paula. She's the only hope any of us have left.”

“We can help them?” Kysandra said in exasperation.

She was sitting on one of the new chairs extruded by the synthesizers, giving Paula a disapproving look. In the chair next to her, Florian—typically—simply seemed bemused by the discovery of Unit976 and the other Macule Units of Zone43, treating them as just another marvel of the universe outside Bienvenido. Ry, of course, was excited at first contact with a non-genocidal alien race, while Paula had smoothly incorporated its potential into her plan. Kysandra wondered just what it would take to fluster the girl; so far, everything that had happened in the last few weeks had proved she was pretty much unflappable.
No wonder the ANAdroids were so pleased she finally turned up.

“Yes,” Paula said. “It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Kromal were obviously a territorial species; they fought and lost a war motivated by naked tribalism. And trade is the basis of most tribal and national affairs, so they understand the concept perfectly. We exchange our knowledge and offer to take them back to the Commonwealth galaxy with us, in return for the raw materials that they possess.”

“Crud,” Kysandra grumbled under her breath. She looked out of the dome's window. Unit976 had been joined by several similar machines, one of which—Unit26—made them look small. Unit26 was a single metal cylinder forty-five meters long, with massive caterpillar tracks on each corner and sensor prongs protruding along its flanks. It towed its own fission reactor behind it—a big wheeled sphere that dripped oils at an alarming rate as it crawled along. Fifteen long silver thermal radiator panels stuck out of the sphere's steel casing, as if it had stolen wings from broken airplanes and didn't quite know what to do with them.

Right now it was rolling slowly around the extruded domes, scanning them with its crude sensors. And that wasn't the only attempt to discover the secrets the humans had brought to Macule. Unit976 had opened hatches on its third section and five small wheeled vehicles came racing down the ramps, trailing power and data cables behind them. Kysandra had named them the puppies from the way they nipped about between the few Commonwealth machines left outside the domes, examining them as best their small sensor arrays could manage.

“The Kromal might have been tribal,” she said. “but Giu alone knows what these things are,” she said.

“I performed a thorough fieldscan on Unit976,” Paula said. “Its mechanics are relatively crude, barely ahead of Bienvenido's technology. However, there is one exception. The controlling intelligence, its processor core, is mainly biological in nature.” Her u-shadow sent them all a file that contained the fieldscan imagery of Unit976. Right at the center of the second segment was a spherical module into which all the machine's data cables were plugged. At its core was a hexagonal star-array of bioware cylinders, sustained in a fluid that seemed to serve as both coolant and nutrient.

“Not quite as advanced as us ANAdroids,” Demitri said, “but certainly capable of semi-sentient thought if the programming is sophisticated enough. My only worry would be what kind of corruption has crept in over time.”

“Unit976 claims that original Kromals downloaded their memories into the biocores,” Paula said. “The Units they're housed in can be repaired and rebuilt with a basic engineering capability—presumably in the caves Ry found. They build completely new ones every few hundred years when the biocore has also begun to degrade. The Unit simply transfers its thought patterns and memories into a newly grown core, which is installed inside the new Unit.”

“And they've kept that going for thirty-five thousand years?” Kysandra asked in astonishment.

“Thirty-five thousand years is only sixty or seventy generations for the Units,” Demitri said. “Technology stasis is easy to maintain over such a period. Their only problem is going to be copy errors creeping in. Other than that, theoretically they should be able to maintain themselves for millennia to come, until an outside event intervenes or their resources shrink.”