Labyrinth of Night (17 page)

‘I don’t understand, sir,’ he said.

Halprin did not mince words. ‘For this job, you’re expected to go to Mars yourself.’

Nash thought about it for less than a second before he pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Excuse me, Robert,’ he said politely; it was one of the very few times he had ever used Control’s first name. ‘I think I have a boat that needs to be mended.’

He picked up his trenchcoat and started walking toward the door. Halprin let him get halfway across the office before he cleared his throat. ‘If it is of any interest to you,’ he said, ‘the name of the person you’ll be investigating is Terrance L’Enfant.’

Another brief pause. ‘Commander Terrance C. L’Enfant, United States Navy, former captain of the USS
Boston
.’ There was the sound of a match striking, then the sucking sound of Halprin’s pipe. ‘Someone you know, yes?’

Nash stopped just before he reached the door. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment and then, just as Control must have anticipated, he turned around and walked back to the conference room table.

‘Good.’ Control settled back in his chair and stroked the warm bowl of his pipe. ‘Now that we’ve done with the histrionics, let’s get started, shall we? Pick up your file, please, and open it to the first page…’

In the vast shadow of the D & M Pyramid, a stainless-steel sphere hung suspended beneath a tripod above a crevasse, and within the sphere was a spider. The spider had been manufactured by the St Petersburg Robotics Corporation and had cost nearly one million eurodollars. It was St Valentine’s Day, but nobody at Cydonia Base was thinking about love.

Lieutenant Charlie Akers steadied himself carefully against a leg of the tripod and reached across the open pit to yank a powerline free from the sphere’s electrical port. He hauled the line away from the crevasse and the surrounding rubble, dropped it on the ground, gave the wrench-cable a final yank to test its slack, then turned to give a thumbs-up to one of the three TV cameras arrayed around the pit.

Inside Cydonia Base’s monitor center several miles away, Tamara Isralilova watched Akers as he stepped out of camera range. She tapped a series of commands into her console keypad. ‘Internal batteries charged and at maximum rated efficiency,’ she said, watching the graphs on her console’s flat screens. ‘Power-up sequence initiated. Drop minus twenty-five seconds and counting.’ She quickly looked over her shoulder at Paul Verduin. ‘Ready, Paul?’

Behind her in the darkened monitor center, Verduin sat tensely in his chair. Multicolored lights flashed in complex patterns on his console, but he was literally blind to them; the virtual-reality helmet which covered his head except for his nose, mouth and chin was completely opaque. ‘Ready to switch on,’ he said.

He reached out with his right hand, feeling for the master switch on the console. It was the only non-VR switch he had to use to pilot the probe, and he had carefully memorized its location at his station. But before he could find it, he felt another hand brush past him and toggle the switch. As light suddenly rushed into his dark world, he murmured, ‘Thanks, Shin-ichi.’

‘You’re welcome.’
The voice did not belong to Shin-ichi Kawakami, however. It was Terrance L’Enfant who had spoken.

Of course it would be L’Enfant, Verduin reflected; he couldn’t let anything happen without muscling in somehow.
Typical pushy American,
he thought, then reconsidered. No. Not so typical. Verduin might have given voice to his annoyance otherwise, but with the commander…

Yet L’Enfant was only a small irritation, at least for the moment. All at once, Verduin was one with the probe, even though it was located several miles away. He could see through a small slot in the sphere, as clearly as if it were with his own flesh-and-blood eyes, the legs of the tripod, the skinsuited technician standing nearby and, looming like the mountain before him, the broken north-eastern flank of the D & M Pyramid, towering almost a mile into the pink sky. Digital readouts at the margins of his vision showed compass coordinates, attitude, battery draw, light density and more. Unreal, and yet so real…

‘Transit capsule drop minus fifteen seconds.’
This time it was Shin-ichi Kawakami’s gentle voice which prompted him.
‘How are you doing, Paul?’

‘Telemetry is nominal.’ He gazed up at the translucent row of green lights above his forehead, focused on the second one from the left, and deliberately blinked twice; it immediately shifted to red. ‘Recorder on.’

‘Da,’
Isralilova reported, and immediately corrected herself:
‘Yes, we copy.’
English was the common tongue here, even though Verduin could have understood her if she had chosen to speak in Russian.
‘Descent sequence on full auto. Ten seconds to drop. Nine…eight
…
’

Verduin folded his hands in his lap and tried to make himself relax. For the next few seconds, he had nothing to do but enjoy the ride. If, of course, one could relax while falling down a shaft five hundred meters deep, even if it was only through telepresence. He took a deep breath…

‘Two…one…drop initiated.’

He almost
felt
the tripod release the grommets on the sphere; there was a flash of motion as the probe dropped into the crevasse, its rapid descent controlled only by the cable. Verduin instinctively shut his eyes, then forced them open. In the half-light from the top of the pit, he saw the rough rock walls blur past as he plummeted into the abyss, until sunlight faded and he was thrust into darkness.

Digital numbers flickered at the edges of his vision, so fast as to be almost meaningless. Down, down, down…

‘Four hundred meters,’
Tamara reported.

‘Basement floor, coming up,’ Verduin said. ‘Garden utensils, books, children’s toys…’

‘Cut the cute stuff,’
he heard Marks say from the other side of the module.

Anger swept aside his anxiety. ‘I would like to see you try this,’ he replied, and almost instantly regretted it. Marks was likely to rip the VR helmet off his head and do exactly that. After five months, Verduin had come to realize that arguing with L’Enfant’s bullies—
escorts,
if one still cared to use that term—was always a mistake. Shin-ichi was the only one who could…

‘Three hundred meters,’
Tamara said tersely.
‘Two twenty-five…two hundred…slowing rate of descent…’

The transit capsule had passed the point where the ancient meteor had collapsed part of the D & M Pyramid. Although he was still blind, the probe’s cameras shielding him within the protective shroud of the capsule, Verduin knew from sorties with earlier probes that the rock walls of the pit were smoother and less jagged at this lower depth, showing where the drilling machines had excavated the last few hundred feet to the underground tunnel which he himself had dubbed Mama’s Back Door.

‘Rate of descent slowing,’
Tamara reported.
‘One hundred meters…seventy-five…fifty…twenty-five…we’re doing fine…twenty, eighteen, fifteen…’

‘Please don’t rush on my account,’ he said half-jokingly.

‘Five meters…four…three-point-seven-five…three meters…we’re in the tunnel.’

The vertical shaft had reached its end.
‘Point-five meters to the floor,’
Tamara said.
‘Platform attitude stable.’
She paused to glance over her console, then added,
‘You’ve reached bottom.’

He slowly let but his breath as he heard her deft fingers tapping in a new series of commands.
‘Collapsing transit capsule,’
she said.
‘You’re on manual now. Good luck.’

‘Thank you,’ Verduin said. ‘AI system engage. Spider, activate lamps and switch camera to infra-red.’

All of a sudden, monochromatic light rushed back into his world as the probe’s voice-operated AI interface switched on its external infra-red lamps and slotted the appropriate filters over its fiber optic array. Verduin saw the curved sides of the capsule fall open, like an egg hatching from the inside. Before him stretched a long, horizontal tunnel, like an ancient wormhole although not burrowed by any creature which had evolved on Earth; the compass told him that it lead north-by-north-west. Straight toward the catacombs.

‘It’s dark down here,’ he said nervously.

‘We need to move quickly,’
Kawakami reminded him.
‘Any minute now they shall…
’

‘Of course.’ He sucked in his breath. ‘Spider, move forward two meters and stop.’

The probe was a mechanical spider. Approximately the size of a terrier, it moved on six multi-jointed legs arranged along the sides of its low-slung body. As Verduin spoke, it clattered off the bottom of the collapsed transit capsule and onto the smooth floor of the tunnel, its way illuminated by a small, front-mounted infra-red lamp. Two long whisker-like antennae protruded from either side of the multifaceted camera array, brushing gently against the rock walls. Verduin could see, and almost feel, the slight jarring as the tiny footpads found minute cracks and faults in the tunnel floor.

‘Transit capsule being withdrawn,’
Isralilova said.

The sphere was being dragged back to the surface by the wrench-cable. Verduin was alone in Mama’s Back Door now, if only in a teleoperational sense. ‘It feels weird,’ he murmured.

Don’t worry about that now,’
Kawakami said. He paused for a second.
‘Picking up EMF trace near your touchdown point,’
he added softly.

‘What’s that mean?’
L’Enfant demanded.

His question was ignored, but Paul knew what Kawakami had meant. The probe’s sensors had already registered non-background electromagnetic activity within the tunnel—EMF which was, so far, the only reliable signature of the Cooties.

The pseudo-Cooties, rather. As always, Verduin had to remind himself that the autonomous robots that lurked beneath the Martian surface were only analogues of the real extraterrestrials. Nonetheless, any activity in this seldom-used part of the uncharted catacombs between the D & M Pyramid and the Labyrinth could mean only one thing at this particular time.

They knew he was here, and they were coming for him.

That was precisely the reason why he was here.

‘Spider, walk forward,’ Verduin said. ‘Track and follow the EMF trace.’ He smiled to himself as the arachnid probe trundled forward, homing in on the electromagnetic signature of the pseudo-Cooties.

This time, the science team was ready for them. If everything went according to plan, the camouflage would work and the alien robots would mistake the spider for one of their own. If the subterfuge was successful, he could enter their ranks as a Trojan horse.

He wiped his sweaty, unseen palms on the legs of his trousers. Finally, after all the failures before this attempt, they were on the verge of exploring the catacombs beneath the City.

‘Here, kitty kitty kitty…’ he murmured.

‘Picking up stronger EMF pulses from your sensor pod,’
Kawakami said.
‘Directly ahead of you and closing…
’

‘Please be careful,’
Tamara said softly.

Paul thought of Sasha Kulejan: how he had died down here only three months earlier, shortly after the tunnel had been discovered and opened. Sasha had attempted to explore Mama’s Back Door in an armored suit, thinking that he could somehow sneak up on the Cooties. His body had never been found; like Hal Moberly before him, the Cooties had inexplicably removed all traces of his armored recon suit. His final scream, as the alien robots swarmed over his armored exoskeleton, had been the last they had ever heard of him.

No wonder Tamara had given her illogical warning; even though Paul was in the tunnel only as an artificial presence, she had heard her lover die. How she could even stand to be in the monitor center was beyond his…

Something moved in the shadows of the tunnel, just beyond reach of his lamplight.

‘Contact!’
Kawakami snapped.

‘Spider, stop forward motion,’ Paul said. The probe halted. ‘All right, now,’ he said. ‘Come on, come on…’

For a moment, there was nothing; small vague shapes scurried just outside the range of his infrared searchlight. Around him, he could hear a stillness in the module as everyone held their breath.’ Come on,’ he whispered. ‘What are you waiting for…?’

All at once, they came: a dozen or more pseudo-Cooties, rushing as a copper-toned wave out of the darkness. They moved so quickly, there was no way he could count their number; first there was empty tunnel, then they were upon him, a swarm of identical metallic insects, skittering on their mechanical legs as they charged the probe.

Verduin’s point-of-view rocked violently as they flung themselves on the probe. He heard Kawakami yell something, then caught a glimpse of one of the spider’s forelegs as it was ripped out of its shoulder-socket. God, they were fast! Two scissor-like pincers swept directly in front of his eyes…

Verduin jerked back in his seat…then the universe vanished, replaced by static gray fuzz, rapidly fading to black.

‘Telemetry lost,’
Isralilova said.
‘Uplink severed at source.’

‘I’m dead,’ he sighed.

The inside of the helmet was now completely dark. He slowly pulled it off and dropped it in his lap with a deep sigh of relief, feeling cool sweat run down his forehead from his matted hair. Everyone in the module was just beginning to turn toward him, and Verduin realized that his ‘death’ in the tunnel had lasted only a very few seconds.

L’Enfant was the first to speak. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Did you see something?’

Verduin opened his mouth to speak, only to find that words failed him. He shrugged and held up his hands.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘What a garden spider sees when a mantis is about to devour it alive.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead and took a long, deep breath. ‘Alien. So
alien…
’

‘Of course it was alien,’ L’Enfant said impatiently. ‘What else do you think we’re dealing with here? One of your Amsterdam window-girls?’

He bent closer to Paul, resting his right hand on the console as he grasped the back of Verduin’s chair with his left hand and swiveled it toward him. ‘I don’t want to hear subjective opinion,’ L’Enfant demanded, gazing straight into Verduin’s eyes. ‘I want to know
what
you saw.’