Borderlands: The Fallen (32 page)

“I’ve been observing your race since you arrived on this planet, through the occasional scan. But as I was dormant most
of the time, in regeneration mode, I was not able to see everything. It was enough. You seem fairly typical primate-type bipedal omnivores, predatory, astoundingly wasteful and self-deceiving. As a people you have some sociobiological altruistic instincts, as well as a capacity for elaborate societal structures and modalities of exchange. Yours is a remarkably short-lived species. Level of consciousness, averages fairly low …”

“Look, the big question for me, is, what do you plan to do with me? Do I even want to know? Should I beg you to kill me painlessly or what?”

“If I decide to be sensible and practical and simply put you in my samples collection, with your own bottle and label, you will be put to death quite painlessly. I see no point in cruelty to animals. But I haven’t quite decided what to do yet. I’m still assessing the situation. Essentially, if I find the Hidden Thing of Interest in you or one others of your companions, I will be inclined to release you, and to let you and some of the others live. That Hidden Thing of Interest is a precious thing, rare and exotic and exquisite. I thought I’d glimpsed it, before, in your people, though it was tiny, emaciated, underfed, barely alight. But I could not be sure—my senses were not fully recovered.”

“What is that ‘Hidden Thing of Interest’ that makes someone worth preserving?”

“The spark of higher consciousness. It’s usually expressed in meaningful self-sacrifice, enlightened unselfishness, mindful heroism. All that speaks of a level of inner potential, which could evolve to entelechy. I’ll know it when I see it.”

Zac hesitated, wondering what tack to take. He was in danger of being stuck on a pin under glass, it seemed. A dead specimen. He needed more information. “You said you’d examined others?”

“My monitor captured a few others of your kind, some years back, but they died before I was able to look deeply into their minds. Since I’m beginning to reach full regeneration, I was able to investigate your mind more thoroughly. My primary conclusion is that you personally are a flailing, bumbling loser, a chump who usually makes the wrong choices, more or less typical of a race that has allowed greed to formulate its social standards. You have only a few qualities of interest to me—and you have kept them suppressed. You are like people lost in a dark cave, wishing for light, refusing to light the candles you carry for fear of burning your fingers a little. What a lot of jackasses you people are.”

“Oh and you’re so much better. Probably if I had access to your memories and your history I wouldn’t be all that impressed.”

“Since individuals of my race, at this time, live about ten thousand of your years, at least, with our most recent civilization’s history stretching for millions of years, I doubt you’d be able to follow it. You can barely count to a hundred without losing track of the process.”

“Mind telling me what planet you’re from?”

A collection of sounds and shapes appeared in Zac’s mind, the shapes arranged in a three-dimensional lattice that seemed to intertwine meaningfully with the sounds.
“That is the name of my homeworld. The short version. The full version requires seventy-seven thousand characters to express.”

“You’re not from this solar system, anyway?”

“No. Nor am I from the galaxy you so quaintly call ‘the Milky Way Galaxy.’ I am exploring galaxies that neighbor the one my own people are in. I’ll return home soon with my
report. In emerging from a wormhole, I was misdirected by an errant black-hole gravitational aberration, and was struck by a comet, which sent me off course, causing me to crash on this world.

“I’ve lain here for hundreds of ‘years’ getting my strength and consciousness back. In the process I tapped the raw energy deep under this volcanic structure, with an exploratory probe, and converted it to my own uses …”

“Don’t I get to meet you, face-to-face? Or are you inside that big round spiny thing I’m looking at?”

“‘Spiny thing’ … oh that object opposite your chair? That’s a perceptual nerve cluster with sub-brain capabilities. You could not ‘see me face-to-face’—my ‘face’ is spread over my entire person. You would have to perceive too much in three-dimensionality all at once, to see that. But look at anything around and you see part of me. Everything you see is a part of me, here. It’s what you call ‘the alien starship.’”

Zac felt there was something essential he was missing. “So—you
are
the spaceship? Some kind of biocomputer program talking to me? The spaceship is an unmanned drone?”

“No, I’m not a biocomputer, nor a drone, nor a transportation device except in the sense that your own body is your transportation device. I am one single organism. What you suppose to be a spaceship is a conscious organism, a creature who quite naturally is capable of flying through space, and passing through ‘wormholes’ to go vast distances. The creature you are addressing is not in the spaceship. What you suppose to be ‘the spaceship’ is itself the creature you would meet. And you, Zac Finn, are inside my body.”

•   •   •

It was dusk before they were ready to go in search of Zac. Burying Vance took time. Marla scratched Vance’s name into a shard of plains glass, which they set up as a marker. She felt strange doing it. Like she was both betraying Zac—and letting go of part of herself, at once. Vance had been a brute. She had no good reason to feel so attached to him …

Afterward, Marla found food and water for them in the outriders, and they rested in the shade within the hidden entrance—once Roland and Cal had dragged away the bodies of the stalkers and made sure no others were lurking around.

Then, well armed with the weapons of the fallen men, they climbed the winding stone ramp, Marla following Roland and Cal. They worked their way up the narrow canyon to the lava fields near the base of the cinder cone. Roland examined the ground closely in the failing light—and found traces where someone else had recently gone through.

“Two men, if my guess is right,” he said, straightening up from the trail. “Worked their way toward that slope over there.”

Marla looked doubtfully at the roseate sky, the failing light. “You think we can get through this before it gets dark? The ground’s all so sharp and rugged—it’d cut us up pretty badly.”

“I want to go on!” Cal insisted. “My dad is there somewhere, I know it!”

“We can’t be sure that’s where he is,” Marla said. “He might be.”

Roland smiled. “I think we’ll make it if we use these.”
He reached into a coat pocket and took out three small flashlights. “They were in the outriders. One each. Just move careful …”

They set off, treading carefully in the rugged landscape, occasionally receiving contusions on sharp volcanic rock; barking their shins on shadowy stone edges. It was awkward, carrying both the flashlights and the weapons—Cal carried Mash’s shotgun, and one of Vance’s pistols; Marla carried the Cobra; Roland had the Stomper in his hands, the Eridian gun strapped across his back, and pistols on his hips.

By the time they reached the slope, and the smoother lava-flow pathway, they were painfully contused and a little battered. But Cal didn’t complain, Marla noticed.

It was dark, the crescent moon not giving much light. Stars offered some illumination, from this vantage; high above the dusty plain, constellations clustered like extravagant jewelry and shone out with an almost violent effulgence.

“Better switch off the flashlights,” Roland said, cutting his own. “Don’t know when we might run into Crannigan. I want to see him before he sees me. Last I knew we were still allies. But you never can tell. And I’m not sure how he’ll feel about Marla here.”

They rested a little—and then pressed on, soon coming to the deep stony gulch, and the view on the interior of the broken-open cinder cone. Here they stopped and gazed at the glowing natural amphitheater of the broken volcano. At night it was like looking into a sliced-open geode. The shadowiness of the amphitheater was interrupted by glimmers; glowing, oddly shaped objects scattered about the
debris field and, farther back, a strong but fluctuating glow from an object that was difficult to identify. The curved, smooth object in the back was large—big enough to be a starship, by Marla’s reckoning.

“That must be it!” Cal said excitedly. “You see it, back there? It’s big as a freighter, at least!”

“Keep your voice down, kid,” Roland growled softly. “Don’t want Crannigan to hear us.”

“I thought you were working with him …”

“Let’s get a handle on what’s up with Crannigan before we partner up with him again. There’s a whole ’nother factor I’ve been half-expecting …” He glanced up at the sky.

“So much for my plan,” Marla said. “I was going to start yelling for Zac.”

“Not a good idea, and not just because of Crannigan. Those stalkers must have a den around here. Might be more of them. The creepy little bastards sneak up on you.”

“I’m not sorry they killed that eye-patch guy,” Cal said, his voice flat; his eyes cold.

Marla looked at him with concern. What had Pandora done to her son? And to her, really. Cal was in survival mode, and maybe that was good. Maybe it had gotten him through. But would she ever get her child back?

Cal was peering around. He looked disappointed. “Thought I’d see my dad here …”

“Your pa was here, boy,” said a voice in the darkness. “Now he’s back there, somewhere, I reckon. With the ship.”

“Flatten down!” Roland ordered, pointing both his gun and his flashlight toward the sound of the voice. He clicked the flashlight on, and a grizzled old man with a hat made of animal skin blinked at them, put up a hand against the glare.

“Take that damn light out of my eyes!”

Roland lowered the light out of his face but kept the old man in its illumination. The old man had a combat rifle—but it wasn’t pointed at anyone. “Come over here,” Roland ordered. “Now. Hands up—or I’ll cut you down! And I don’t care how good your shield is!”

“Damn shield’s not much use now,” the old man grumbled. He came down the path, into a patch of light from the moon and stars. He was a weathered old man, but his eyes were bright.

“You say something about my dad, mister?” Cal asked.

“Yeah. I did. If you’re Cal Finn and I figure you orta be.”

“I am, yeah, and this is Roland and my mom—Marla Finn.”

Berl clumsily tipped his scruffy hat to Marla. “I’m Berl. I traveled with your husband. I can tell you, he was set on getting back to you. We had our differences, Zac Finn and me. But in the end—he saved my life. Maybe sacrificed himself to do it. I’m not sure he’s …” He shrugged. “I don’t know. The monitor grabbed him, and took him in that spaceship, over there. Or whatever that thing is. I’ve got my doubts.” He sighed. “It’s a sad day. He was the closest thing I had to a friend, except for Bizzy. And I lost both of them to that space demon down there.”

“Did you actually see Zac get killed?” Marla asked, her mouth suddenly so dry she could hardly get the words out.

“No, lady, I didn’t. Just saw him carried off. I don’t know, maybe he’ll get out of there. He’s a resourceful kinda guy. Went through a lot. Got away from me one time when I had him tied up. The scamp.”

Cal scowled. “What’d you tie him up for?”

“Decided I didn’t trust him. Guess the jury’s out on that.
But he’s a pretty good sort. Like I said, he came back for me when he didn’t have to. Lured ’em away so I could sneak out … but they got him instead. Carried him off … You got anything to drink? Of an alcohol-based nature, I mean?”

He looked hopefully at Roland, who shook his head. “I’ve heard of you. Berl. The ghost of the badlands.”

Berl grinned crookedly. “Might as well be one. Probably be one for real soon enough.” He looked at them—his gaze weighing Cal, Roland, and Marla. “Not comfortable around so big a crowd as this …”

“We gotta sneak in that ship and get my dad out!” Cal declared, turning to Roland. “We can’t leave him in there. He could be trapped!”

Roland shook his head. “I’m not going to put you in a trap to get him out of one. That thing, whatever it is, appears to be dangerous. I need time to think. We’ll make camp behind that boulder, over there, just off the trail. And we’ll figure this out …”

They made a cold camp, hunkered on graveled volcanic rock in the chilly shadow of a boulder, a few paces off the trail. They passed around skag jerky and water. Berl offered them Primal testicles. Marla and Cal said no; Roland cheerfully accepted one. “Like to bite one off the Primal bastard that blew up my partner …”

Cal suffered Marla to hold him against her, and fell asleep. She slept fitfully and woke when it was still dark, just before dawn. She thought she was dreaming, at first, when she saw the spacecraft coming down through the atmosphere, at first just a light, then taking shape as it descended, slowing its descent with pulsers. It was shaped
like a step pyramid, point upward, but made of a gray-blue metal. A logo on the side of the vessel might say
Atlas
but she couldn’t be sure. She recognized it as one of the larger orbital shuttles. In orbit it docked within a much larger spacecraft—which meant there was a starship up there.

She glanced over at Roland, and saw him watching it too. The shuttle descended till the top of the boulder blocked it from sight.

Roland got up and moved silently toward the trail. Marla eased Cal onto the gravel. Cal curled up, head pillowed on his arm, reluctant to fully wake.

She followed Roland out into the cool air of morning, onto the dewy lava-flow path. A gray light picked out enough of the ground so they could make their way to the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep stone gulley.

Down below they saw the orbital shuttle landing on a flattened spot in the scree, whining as it settled down, its pulsers ruffling up a cloud of dust. Nearby, apparently waiting for it to land, was a group of three men.

“That’s Crannigan, Rosco, and Rans Veritas,” Roland said. “Seems like Crannigan went behind my back and contacted Atlas. They told us a lander couldn’t get this close. Either they were lying about that—or something’s changed.”