DUALITY: The World of Lies (14 page)

Aru did not know how to respond to that. Of
course it was too large to bring aboard the Kinetic; it was a third
the size of it and probably half its equal in volume.

“Mei... we are
to 
investigate
 the object,” he reminded her. “There's nothing in the
mission parameters about retrieving it.”

“We are to investigate
its 
contents
,
Aru,” she countered. “And since we are running short on time, I say
we tether it to the Kinetic and haul it out of here with us into
cooler climes.”

Was she completely mad? “Mei, you see these
energy readings, don't you? We're not even going to be able to get
near that thing, let alone capture it!”

“The tethers would allow catastrophic levels
of hypercharged ions to seep into the Kinetic's magnetosphere
during our coronal exit. Also, the tethers themselves would
invariably incinerate,” offered System.

“Aru, I haven't asked you for a maintenance
report, have I?”

“You haven't heard one from System either.
You're welcome.”

“And I appreciate that, love. I truly do. But
to complete this mission we can't just come back with some crazy
pictures and energy readings; we've got to know what's in there!
It's coming with us, one way or another.”

Aru's head hurt. Even if the ship were not on
in its death throes, there was just no possible way for them to
capture an object that massive and haul it out of the
corona.

“What is that?! Kinny!” Mei demanded, pointing
at a development on the holograph. The shimmering force field of
the target in its entirety was now in view, and streaming from the
back of it seemed to be... a tail. Aru expanded the image. Upon
closer resolution, the tail was shown to be a pair of braided cords
twisting and streaming their way out from the edge of the object's
force shield and winding down towards the photosphere.

“It's a plasma cable, Commander, that appears
to be originating from the solar surface,” answered
Kinny.

“That would start to explain where the power
is coming from to generate these fields,” she mused.

The object started to come into visual range
of Nearprobe 2's cameras. Through the red grainy haze it was
impossible to make out anything visually at first. System overlaid
lines to highlight the edges, and created a half dozen other high
contrast false light displays to give them a better look. The
sphere was now visible, barely.

“Telemetry confirms a solid body. Spheroid or
possibly perfectly spherical object with a 30 meter diameter, as
earlier postulated,” announced System. “We should have a clear line
direct image shortly.”

In a meek voice Mei asked him, “So.... you're
not taking those damage reports either?”

He shook his head.

“Oh... oh that's bad, isn't it?” She mumbled
more or less to herself.

“Nearprobe 1 coming into sensor range,” System
reported. Nearprobe 1 was approaching regressively along the orbit,
and gave them a far-side mirror-image of what they were already
observing. Probes 3 through 6 would be converging shortly and were
all set to be in place by the time the Kinetic rendezvoused with
the sphere.

Nearprobe 2's approach hit the sweet spot
where the fog cleared and they got their first unimpeded view of
the sphere in high resolution, which System immediately magnified
to intimidating proportions on the holograph.

Mei let out a gasp and Aru was shocked into
awestricken silence.

There, buzzing and crackling before them, was
The Golden Sphere in all its terrifying glory. It was a flawless
orb of uniform glimmering gold encapsulated in a force-shield so
mighty its outline was clearly visible in the stardust. Within,
wide bolts brachiating into fine fractaling hairs of fierce blue
energy discharged between the sphere and the inside of the field,
cracking and flashing in a near seizure-inducing lightning dance so
intensely luminous that even as a filtered and projected image Aru
found himself shielding his eyes from it.

It was the damndest sight he'd ever beheld.
But wasn't the damndest thing you ever saw exactly what you should
expect to find on an odyssey to the depths of Hell?

This was it, this was the end. And this symbol
of madness was the vision of it.

He peaked at the ship's diagnostics to
momentarily distract himself from the mind-crippling terror that
loomed before them. The heatsinks were all lost, the outer hull of
the ship warped beyond recognition, and the thermal seepage to the
inner hull had begun the irreversible process of accelerating. They
were, by every measure of reason, doomed to die within the
hour.

G
ahre
awoke late, sluggish and sweaty from the sun bearing down, his mind
feeling about as nimble as a brick and unable to remember most of
the night. There had been a bit of rain, and the site stunk of
soggy coals.

His varmint companion was long gone
and had left quite a mess its wake. It had managed to wrangle open
a strap on his satchel and pilfer his preserved
rations. 
So much for food
reserves!
 It had also torn into his
teas and herbs, leaving Gahre with the hopeless task of separating
them back apart. In the end he resigned to having them blended
together and drinking very oddly flavored tea for the remainder of
the journey. The Cloudy Moss pods were all still there and at the
appropriate dryness for packing. He squashed the whole collection
into one jar, but left himself out a wee pod... for
later.

With what felt like a headfull of sediment, he
set out again scouring the area for a trail or a marker of some
sort. Again, all signs of such eluded him. He swept in a great
circle back to the gorge without finding a trace of one. That
wasn't like him at all, but the guidebook did say the trail was
well hidden amid a turbid landscape. He thought about just heading
west into what would become rolling hills, but this was a very
large tract of wildlands, and he could find himself lost days deep
into it, and far from his destinations without following that
trail.

He sat down back at his previous night's camp.
He could rest another day here, he supposed -not that he
particularly wanted to. Frustrated, he dug into his pockets, pulled
out the pipe and the Cloudy Moss pod, and unwound a while as he
smoked the whole of it. He rose to cautiously scout again, making a
conscious effort to keep his wits about himself as he had just
consumed about triple the dose he'd tried yesterday.

His perceptions quickly altered, and his mind
felt clear and fresh. The world became positive and filled with
potential once more. It smelled to him now as though the land
itself had cast its first scent of summer into the air to herald
that season's onset. He peered down the vertical cliffs of the
gorge to the rapids far below and said goodbye to the river which
led to the inland Lost Sea and the tropical realms of Omadi. A part
of him longed to follow that route and disappear into their
peaceful culture rooted in Dharma, with its temples and mysteries,
and there was no real reason he couldn't. He could just slip away
from Tulan and make a start fresh. The notion was as romantic as it
was tempting, but still something held him back. He wasn't quite
sure what it was, but he had some impalpable nagging in the
recesses of his mind telling him he still had unfinished business
back home.

He wracked his mind to determine what that
might be. Friends and family? He was not nearly so weighed down
with these as most men. Gahre was a kind and empathic soul, polite
and even charming when he chose to be, but when it came to close
personal relationships, he was... aloof. He never got tied down in
the issues or business of others, and he tenaciously avoided
committing his time to anyone. Time. He was self-centered when it
came to his time; he wanted it all to himself, and went to great
lengths to make sure he didn't get trapped into social obligations
that stole it away from him. That's what people did, his peers. He
had seen it over and over again. They would fall for a maiden and
marry, become consumed with their work, their in-laws, their
colleagues, their finances, their business, their properties....
until they no longer owned more than a few hours of their own time
in an entire week. Gahre owned every moment of his time, night and
day, so he could not put his finger on what it was that beckoned
him back there. Maybe it had something to do with his dealings with
Indulu. Indulu intrigued him. He was his godfather, but in
absentia, so he barely knew the man really. Uncle had raised him,
while Indulu was all over the realms conducting the high affairs of
governance. He spoke to Indulu generally only once a year, around
the Spring Conference, which would be conducted soon. The field
guide! Scouring his mind for the reason behind his homeward draw,
somehow he made the connection to the field guide he carried. It
was, he recalled, on loan from the Tulan Library, which expected
its return.

“No, you foolish mind!” he laughed. “You are
grasping at straws!”

Obviously he would never think twice about
venturing to far-off lands over such a trivial obligation. His mind
really wandered down some errant roads sometimes. That reminded him
of the previous night spent waxing philosophical with a raccoon,
and he laughed again.

The optical effects of the drug were greatly
enhanced by the daylight. Cloud to sod and all in between reflected
the radiant majesty of Cearulei Azur. Light and color joyously lit
the world for him, and the path revealed itself. A line of shining
silver light emerged on the forest floor before him and wound down
into the lower lands and further up and over a yonder hill. Without
thought or question, he strode into the forest’s nearly tangible
essence, accented by warmth and breeze and the budding scents of
spring. The hue of the greenery still moistened by the morning dew
was a newly discovered color to him, a glowing pastel. The world
around him transformed into a painting. It was all heavenly art, he
realized, all preset for this very moment, laid out for him and him
alone. Who was he, he wondered? Was he this moment, this
environment, all one in the same? There was no more distinguishing
himself from his surroundings than the painter and the painting,
the water and sea. Nature! Nature was his nature. The running
stream, the breeze, the dew, the cycles of life... it was all of
him. That world of man, that corrupt and deviant aberration of
nature; he did not belong to it. He was primordial. He was
eternal!

He glided along the silver pathway's every
twist and turn, hill after hill, and delighted in the sensation of
every step and all the splendor of his hypnotic surroundings. Hours
floated by like a dream as he drifted deeper into the canvas. The
clouds opened and the heavens played for him a symphony of empyreal
melodies, notes so perfect in their pitch the entire world
resonated with their vibrations. He had visions of grand armies of
angels and celestial battles and beautiful women and great feasts.
Every instant fulfilled him with awe and wonder, every moment was
bliss as he wove his way into the magic horizon until every aspect
of his passage blended together and time ceased to be, and all
things within and without became unified as one mind, his. Music,
color, movement flowed forth undifferentiated and swept him along
with it.

When he phased back, rather abruptly, into
lucid sobriety, he had no idea where he was or what he had been up
to. Immediately apparent was that he was seated muck deep on the
edge of a pond. Some flicker of memory reminded him an aethereal
nymph queen hovering above a body of water that was not water but
pure shining metallic fluid, she had beckoned him.

But this, this
was 
water
 he sat in at the pond's edge, well, more like muck and
algae, black smeary sediment and slimy undergrowth. He was covered
in it from head to toe. He had been bathing in this sludge for God
knows how long, and it had undoubtedly seeped into his pores. His
dull head made each realization dawn slowly, and each was worse
than the last. He was unclothed and his upper body was badly
scratched and riddled with insect bites. When at last he could
separate his brain from the blaring pain signals it was receiving,
his ears attuned to the discordant buzzing of the mosquitoes
swarming in a thick cloud around him.

The pain. There was enough blood congealed
within the muck plastered his to body to alert him that he must be
injured. He focused on his body to locate the specific sources of
what had been til now just a mass of undifferentiated pain. Upper
body: deep scratches to two full lacerations that were still
letting blood, one that extended from his chin and down back across
his neck, bitemarks, some deep from a mammal of what he guessed to
be of moderate size.

Another flicker came to him, a hazy vision of
a gnarled tree with a cat on its branch. The cat had a long wispy
mane that billowed like smoke and pointed ears with tufts sprouting
from them. He remembered approaching it. Making sense of the
drugged memory he realized he had tussled with a bobcat. He had
approached the notoriously vicious animal as if to pet a housecat,
and it had leapt upon him.

More pains were present in his
lower body. He stood himself upright with all the grace and vigor
of an old man half in the grave, and stumbled onto the bank of the
pond with a marked limp. He could not bear to rest even a tiny
amount of weight on his right foot. There were dozens of long lumps
on his mud-matted lower half. The backs of some of the lumps poked
out and glimmered a dark surface in the twilight. Leeches, and
enormous ones at that! He braced one arm against a tree for balance
and bent forward to slowly pluck them off. There an acute stinging
in his upper left thigh. He wiped it down to the thinnest layer of
goop possible to discover two holes, red and swollen.
Great! A snakebite.
 Roughly judging by the fang gap, he reckoned it must
have been a serpent a good meter or two in length. This was quite
grim, for it were a water snake, he was most likely
envenomated.