All Fall Down (29 page)

           
Even in his weakened state he was astute. Kate admired him. She rose and stood near him. He tapped her wrist communicator, and spoke several access codes and passwords into it. He started saying a final password or code, Kate couldn't tell, but before he could finish he swayed and slumped into his chair.

           
Kate looked at the immobile heap.

           
“Verigua?”

           
The molecule still floating in the air beside her disappeared, replaced by two eyes, cartoon-like, sketches of black defining them against the white, “This is turning out to be a most curious day.”

           
Kate looked up, “I think I'm going to need some help.”

           
“I heard what he said.”

           
“Do you know anything about it?”

           
“Nothing. Cross my heart.” Verigua moved Doctor Currie's body into the air and onto a holo operating table which materialised from the bright white ether. “By the way, I visited the corridor, deep in the Colony.”

           
Kate pulled over a holo tool. She had to stop and practice deep breathing to steady her hand. She couldn't get the thought out of her head that there were human-alien hybrids below the Colony. So now she knew what Daoud was up to. The mission grew worse with each passing hour. She was starting to feel out of her depth. “And?”

           
“There is a barrier which stops me passing. I am trying to break the programming on it.”

           
“You know when I came here I thought this was going to be fairly easy.”

           
“Ah, Kate,” Verigua swirled from the whiteness into a black cat, sitting at the end of the holo operating table, “you humans never make things easy.”

           
“This isn't a Colony. It's a nest of vipers.” She readied some tools over Doctor Currie's head and paused to rub her eyes. “I'm so tired.”

           
“I'm afraid I cannot help, except with safety features to stop you harming him permanently.”

           
She looked up at the black cat, “Please. I need your help. I don't think I can manage this alone.”

The silver ship gyroscoped across Fall's barren surface. In the rare night, the sky was a muddy violet, dust polluted. The ship's guiding lights strobed, bringing a harsh, spinning white light to the cracked ground. A meteor flashed from the heavens to the ground, creating a complicated colour flow across the horizon. Beneath the ship, seen in hologrammatic projection in the ship's hold, the ground crazed in an increasingly anxious web of fissures. The original Colony structure crept closer across the web, a brooding, pitted dune of sorrow.

           
“These tunnels go everywhere. It can be hard knowing where they all are when your physical self is locked in one room.”

           
Win turned from the ship's control panel and quickly looked at the AI avatar in the holo cube. It was a strange thing for Verigua to say, he thought. After all, there were sensors everywhere which the AI could access.

           
Between Win and the avatar was a bright holo display, showing atmospheric conditions and readings from his sensor net. The avatar was difficult to see, but he could make out movement, a swinging motion, backwards and forwards. The avatar continued continued talking while Win analysed incoming data, “It's interesting visiting the old Colony. So different from the other structure. Not a good place for humans, the old Colony.” There was silence, broken by the squeak of a swing going backwards and forwards, “Have you been to Jonah's playground? Everyone likes that, you know, all those little hims chatting and gossiping and adventuring. There's a lot of playing in there, when no one's looking. Wonderful place. Oh, here, look. The ground below. You need to run a deep-ground radar scan. Use infrasound. There's a hidden cavity along here. You're not listening, are you? It's important.”

           
Tapping a finger on the control panel, Win bit his lip, a cheek muscle twitching, “I heard you. I've initiated it. Sorry, Verigua, but I am analysing a lot of data. Have you seen this, there's air movement in the old Colony structure. Most probably due to the night, rapid cooling of the ground air, causing the warmer air below to rise. It means there's air pockets.”

           
Beside him, a small girl wearing butterfly wings stood on tiptoes, craning to see the control panel. “I can do stuff with your readings that will help you.”

           
“I think I'd like to see the underground tunnel network again, the map we looked at before.”

           
Pulling a lollipop from a pocket, the girl walked back to the centre of the room, “OK. Look, I put a spinning top in the holo grid. It's cute, huh?” The girl avatar sucked on its lollipop, eyes wide. Its wings opened, closed. They were iridescent blue and flowed from her blue and white dress.

           
Win ignored it, his attention caught in the search for patterns in the data around him. He pointed back into the holo, where a fault line flickered on the planet's surface, “What's that?”

           
The girl knelt on the floor, its skirt pooling, “Swing by later, or send a probe? It's something interesting.”

           
“Let's concentrate on the old Col...”

           
“Oh. What? That's... that's not fair!” The girl's lower lip trembled. Its wings flapped, fluttered. Giant, over exaggerated tears filled her eyes. The lollipop dropped to the floor.

           
“Verigua? Is this part of your program?” Win watched the girl cry. It refused to speak, giving only snuffles in answer to his questions.

           
Eventually it looked up to Win, “What's happening, Commander? There's something wrong. Don't you like me any more?”

           
Before Win could respond, a black panther dropped into the holo grid, its shoulders hunched, head down, green eyes blazing. The young girl looked around, back at Win, bit its lip. Its holo smeared into the air. A small butterfly flew in circles, was gone. Win glanced from the space where the girl had been, over to the panther, then back.

           
“Commander, I apologise for my absence. Some trouble with your colleagues, I'm afraid. I assure you they are well. Who, may I ask, were you entertaining? I had some trouble getting back in here.”

           
Win stepped backward, confused, “I was talking to you, Verigua. That holo was your avatar.”

           
“Nothing to do with me, Sir. What were you talking about?”

           
“Well, we were talking about the original Colony, the geological faults, some noisy sensory readings between the two Colony structures, just there over by the control panel.”

           
“Mr. Win, the holo grid you've set up doesn't reach the control panel.”

           
Win stared, “Then... Who was I talking to?”

           
“There's a trace in the ship's AI. Let me talk with it, see if we can figure out what just happened. You get back to your sensors and sweeps and probings, Sir.”

           
Win watched the panther pad to the edge of the holo grid, crouch and leap out. A ghostly suggestion of the ship's avatar flickered across the space; a green flash. Win felt disturbed, out of place. Tales of ghosts rose in his mind, warning stories about rogue AIs and cracked Minds left to fester for years with no one to talk to. He returned to the control panel, and set a number of sensor scans running. After, he primed then launched the probes he'd used earlier in the day at the inselberg. They dropped from the ship's hull, one racing over the fault line in the direction of the main Colony, the other two hurtling to the broken dome of sand that covered the original Colony. Those two would find ways in, and map the shattered structure from the inside.

           
While the probes rushed into the night, Win kept his hands in the small holopits at the control panel, manipulating data, readings. His mind wandered elsewhere. The girl avatar had stood next to him, up on tiptoes, trying to see what he was doing. Maybe the Compound X was still active in his brain, allowing the AI to project images there. The avatar had been curious, chatty, familiar. If it wasn't Verigua, or the ship's lower grade AI, then what was it?

           
 
He thought about Hong-xian, who was about the same age as the avatar girl. He wondered what memento he could bring from Fall for his son. The planet had no life, and its visual environment was empty: dust devils against a cracked landscape. Win looked at the time: early evening, standard time. Hong-xian would be playing in the home compound. Win pictured his black hair cut sharply down his ears, hiding his small nose, his face turning round, smeared with mud, a toy automaton in his hand, surrounded by the bushes and ponds of Win's planetside home. He couldn't wait to get home. The whole team was tired, needed a break.

           
A holicon unfolded on the control panel. He glanced at it, expecting to see a map scroll unfold, one of the probes reporting initial subterranean structures. Instead a dark cloud, elaborate in its fluffed curves, formed, sparking lightning. On his gaze, the cloud expanded, the planet's meteorological satellite displaying an oncoming storm.

           
“Computer, weather analysis please. A storm is coming. Is this the planet's permanent storm system?”

           
“Colony reports that this storm is the result of a drop in ambient temperature caused by temporary night conditions. The planet's permanent storm will return in thirty eight hours.”

           
“Risk analysis please. Should we return to the Colony?”

           
“Colony reports a category four storm. Non-essential flights must return within one standard hour. Shall I set a return course now? Travel time is thirteen minutes at standard surface speed.”

           
“Let's wait thirty minutes. Recall the two probes at the old Colony in twenty minutes, and alert the third probe to dock with the ship en route.”

           
Win sent his work from the control panel to the holo grid behind him. Would there be a sign of the alien yet? “Where are you hiding, little one?”

           
He merged blizzards of incoming data from the old Colony with original structural maps. A jagged confusion emerged. There were explosions frozen in tortured walls, obliterated rooms and mangled piping. Entire floors of the old Colony had slid down, following the intrusion of the cruiser. Along the ship's flank was a condensed heap of metal, bioplastic, textiles and organic matter: no doubt the dead, pooling in long-desiccated accumulations of liquids, fats and festered flesh. Thank goodness he wasn't down there himself to smell the decay.

           
The sensors recorded radar images, density maps, gravitational changes, chemical signatures, magnetic envelopes, everything as they passed through the underground tomb. There were a million pockets for something to hide in. In the twenty minutes that Win watched the underground movie unfold, he realised that searching for anything in that foetid mausoleum was almost useless. A killer, an illicit biological research programme. Whatever. It was all but pointless.

           
As the probes approached the surface again, he instructed them to drop small sensors at the entrances. Devices smaller than ants, waiting, watching, listening, recording anything that might come their way.

           
Verigua re-appeared in the holo grid as a glowing white orb, with luminescent tentacles, “It is time to return to the Colony, Win. There is a continuing risk of intrusion into this ship's Mind. I need to bring it back to the hangar to run diagnostics and to calm it. And your General has some news. Are your probes returned?”