Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) (8 page)

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It was like a holo-image flicking on, transforming the darkness into an array of images: information sources, pulsing and waiting. He gasped, heart pounding. He had just flipped over from impending fugue to...data-connect! But how? And to what?

/Is this better?/ asked the quarx, from somewhere within the link. Its voice sounded different, like another human in the neuro.

He could not speak. His heart thundered with joy. He was trembling. He hadn't really imagined that it was possible, hadn't dreamed—

/Take it easy now. It's not—/

/You connected me! You did it! Jesus, it's—it's—/

/John, listen to me!/

The array twinkled around him like a series of gleaming panels, beckoning his inquiries in the dark. He reached out with a tentative finger of thought and—

/It's NOT WHAT YOU THINK!/

—touched an unyielding, unliving surface. There was no connection here, no source, no pulse; it was just an illusion.

/John, don't flip over into fugue...it's.../

/Nothing! It's nothing!/

The quarx was struggling for words. /It's a...stage set, John!/

/What?
Stage set?
/ His frustration rose like a cloud of toxic smoke in the image. /A stage set for
what?
/

/I had to act fast. You were slipping away, and this was the best I could do. It was the best I could do!/

/Best you could do!/ he moaned. /It's a fake!/ A crushing depression was settling around him as he realized the full emptiness of the illusion...

/Look—give me a moment, John! Let me see if I can make it real! Hold on a moment longer. Try it...wait!...
now
./

One of the data-connect panel-images was pulsing bright emerald, against an aura of sunset red. Bandicut's anger twisted around him and finally blew away, leaving him breathless but clearheaded. He suddenly realized what the quarx was trying to tell him. The illusion had short-circuited the fugue; and that blinking light was the one connection that the quarx could make for him, without his neurolink. It was a connection to the quarx. Alien as datanet.

/Link in and ask me questions,/ the quarx said softly.

Nodding to himself, swallowing, feeling a little ashamed for his anger, and wanting desperately for this to be more than he thought it possibly could be, he reached out with his thought toward the pulsing panel, and he plugged in, and his remaining outward senses fell away as he was fully enclosed by darkness, but a darkness filled with energy...

——

/Are you here?/ he whispered in astonishment.

>>  Ask me what you want to know. >>

It was the quarx's voice, but altered...deeper and more resonant, exactly like an information-source replying through the datanet.

He sighed with unexpected pleasure, and a tremendous feeling of need welled up and then as quickly ebbed away. Dizzily, he whispered, /I want to know where you came from and why. And I want to know exactly what you want of me./

>>  I shall try. Where would you like me to begin? >>

He shrugged mentally. /At the beginning, I guess./

>>  Of time? I wasn't there. >>

He began to retort angrily, then realized that the quarx was attempting humor, attempting to lighten things up; and despite himself, he chuckled a little. /All right, you can start later than that. Let's stick to your personal lifetime. Unless, of course, you're
really
long-lived, in which case, you can start by telling what you want with me, and work backwards./

There was a moment of uneasy silence.

>>  I'm...no...not long-lived, certainly not in the way you're thinking. It's true I was...in a sense...alive, millions of years ago, but that's...well...because I was in statis in the translator... >>
  

Bandicut tried to follow that, frowning. /You're not long-lived, but you were alive—in a sense—a million years ago?/

>>  Yes, but the millions of years don't count, you see, because of the stasis...whereas, to understand a quarxian life cycle, the first thing you need to ask is... >>

Bandicut felt himself sliding toward mental quicksand, and interrupted, /All right, wait! How about if you explain all that later./ He paused, sensing the quarx's discomfiture at the interruption. /Let's start with the present, and this "mission" of yours. What is it you're planning to do here? What is this about Earth and some sort of danger?/

The quarx hesitated, as though uncomfortable with the question. Bandicut began to grow impatient, but before he could ask why, the quarx finally spoke.

>>  You see...that's difficult to explain fully just now, because I don't have all of the information yet. The first thing I must do is gather additional data for the translator to process... >>

/Gather data?/ Bandicut asked suspiciously, visions of alien invasions dancing in his head.

>>  No invasions, I assure you. Not from us, anyway. There may, indeed, be something heading for your home planet; but, I believe, it's more in the nature of cosmic debris—and it is my job, and the translator's, to identify that hazard and act to prevent it from striking. With your help, of course... >>

 /Of course,/ Bandicut muttered. /What sort of help? And what kind of debris are we talking about?/

>>  Well...I can't give you the specifics on the debris until we have the rest of that data. I can
guess
, but— >>

/
Guess?
/ Bandicut felt a rush of anger. /Quit bullshitting me, Charlie, or I'm going to go to our company quack Dr. Switzer and have him cut you out with a knife!/

He immediately sensed the quarx's affront.

>> I'm not "bullshitting" you, and I thought you understood that I have no physical presence as you think of it, so your doctor's knife could only harm you, not me. >>

Bandicut sighed in annoyance. /Look, that was just another figure of speech, okay? Now, do you want to continue?/

>>  Oh. Very well. Here is what I was given: a picture of small, orbital-dynamical shifts somewhere in your solar system, leading to the potential hazard. I suspect it's some sort of sizable interplanetary rubble. Listen, John, you must understand that I'm not..."sitting in the left-hand seat" on this one, as you pilot-types would say. So I can't— >>

/Then who
is
sitting in the left-hand seat?/ Bandicut interrupted.

>>  The translator. And once it has the data it needs to positively identify the danger...it will pass that information on to me. And I'll pass it on to you. >>

Bandicut thought he sensed a certain hesitation in the quarx's voice. /Wait just a minute,/ he said. /Who controls the translator? You do, right?/

>>  Me?
Hardly
... >>

Bandicut felt dizzy, and he sensed an eruption of troubled feelings in the quarx. /You mean there's someone else here? Damn it, I knew it—/

>>  John,
no
. It's not what you're thinking. It's just the translator and me, and the translator is just a machine. But it's...sent by others who are, I assure you, very far away. And I've never known it to attempt anything that wasn't...helpful to those it visited. >>

It seemed to Bandicut that the quarx was more than a little hesitant when it spoke about the translator. He wondered why. /Well, that doesn't sound like such a big deal—identifying some space rubble,/ he said cautiously. /But I have to say, you don't sound entirely convinced about it yourself./

>>  What? No, no—the translator is trustworthy. But it's not...always easy...to do what it wants, is the problem. Look, would it help if I filled you in with some background? >>

/Isn't that what I've been asking for?/

>>  I thought you...never mind. Just watch, and listen.... >>

——
. . .

*

The information swirled by like a churning white-water rapids, and it seemed that all he could do was sample here and there, and file for future analysis. But that was difficult; perhaps he would be better off just jumping in and riding downstream with the flow...

It was millions of years ago, just as human science had surmised, that an orphaned body later to be named Triton had fallen into the gravitational influence of the solar system. Charlie and his translator were aboard, though the quarx was in stasis-sleep, and would remain that way for millennia yet to come, until awakened by the translator. But the translator never slept. It probed ceaselessly, monitoring the inner solar system and the evolution of sentient life on the third planet, unmistakably marked by first gradual—then abrupt—transformations of its biosphere. When there were visible events to be observed, the translator recorded them, from volcanoes to atomic explosions to the migrations of small vessels out of the atmosphere. It studied events of all kinds, whether apparently significant or not, and in its own methodical way, drew conclusions about the events it had studied.

Much of what Charlie knew, he had learned directly from the translator. Since his awakening, he had viewed years of reruns of Earth television, all recorded by the translator in that window of time when TV signals had been broadcast into space, before laser and opfiber transmission had mostly ended the free show. He owed much of his knowledge of human culture to such broadcasts.

He'd also gleaned hints of what it was he was doing here, what purpose he intended to serve. Bandicut could only register astonishment: how could the quarx not know his own mission? But it was not his first, far from it, and he had yet to fully understand a mission prior to undertaking it.

The other thing that astonished Bandicut, as he caught all of this in a great swirling stream, was that the quarx really didn't know how the translator performed many of the feats in which the quarx himself was a participant. Surely, if he'd been alive in the translator for millions of years, didn't he
have
to know how it worked? No no no, whispered a quarxly voice, almost lost in the undercurrent. I'm not the master of that science. The quarx knew how to
use
the translator, but it was not actually his machine, not a quarxly machine at all.

But where...how...had Charlie come to be in such a time and place...?

—shift—

The images changed like a whirlpool yawning. There were glimpses of dozens of worlds, dozens of hosts in quarxly lives past...it was like a flickering of holocards...and then the image settled, and filled with the sounds and impressions of other beings, alien beings, living on this very moon. The beings who had left the metal deposits? Their footsteps echoed around the translator, their voices and activities an incomprehensible murmur. For an instant Bandicut thought, with a flash of alarm, that they were here on Triton
now
—

—and then he realized that this scene was far, far in the past, long before Triton had ever come to the solar system. It was the moon as it had been, not just in the past, but so
deep
in the past that primitive life had scarcely yet evolved on Earth. This was Triton eons ago, in another star system, another reality.

It was Triton at war.

In frightening silence, he watched as long plumes of light splashed languidly across the ruined landscape of a nearby planetary body, the mother world. He was aware that the light beams came from the surface of Triton, and they were no mining lasers. They were weapons, terrible weapons, and they were raining devastation upon their homeworld. The plumes of destruction flowed and surged over the planet's surface like tides, and the civilization beneath them crumbled, melted, evaporated.

Nor was the conflict confined to the planet's surface: battle raged in space, as well—between the planet and its moon, and on the surface of the moon. Spaceships tumbled past one another, lancing each other into debris. Streams of fire swept over the surface of the moon, boiling away its atmosphere and reducing miracles of technology to molten slag. The footsteps were gone now; it all happened in silence. But he imagined that he could hear the screams of dying beings echoing across the emptiness of space.

There was no escape, none at all—except down into the buried, shielded translator, the place from which the quarx had first emerged in his failed, futile effort to prevent this tragedy from happening. Though damaged and unable to escape, the translator could probably survive the dark and the cold to come, if it could just survive this last terrible onslaught of violence. The quarx was now slipping downward through the deep darkness of ice, into the machine that might bear him through eons, and perhaps an eternity, of silent exile. He felt, but only distantly, the final tremendous explosions that vaporized the last living beings on the surface and hurled the moon out of orbit, out of its star system, and into the somber and lonely silence of interstellar space. With those explosions had come the final, bitter end to this war, and to the last of those who had fought it.

The quarx drifted off into a timeless, dreamless stasis-sleep. His final thoughts were darkened with grief. Where he was bound now, he had no idea. But he knew it could take longer than the lifetime of his own race to reach his next destination. And while he slept, the translator repaired itself. Would he ever see another quarx? All he really knew for certain was that his life had changed forever, yet again.

Bandicut's whisper was a part of the blurred datastream. My God, is this your memory? Did you really live through this? Were those your people who died?

Not my people, no. For a time, yes, but not anymore...that time was past...

—shift—

The battle images spun swirling away, the whirlpool of memory displaced by new images of Triton in orbit around the cold, cerulean planet Neptune. The heat of its capture had melted most of the moon, causing all the stone and metal in its crust to sink to the core; but some of that energy had been harnessed by the translator, and it, with some of the metal remnants of the alien civilization, had erupted back upward to the surface in a great convective flow as Triton cooled.