Swarm (3 page)

“Tests? You mean this bullshit of doing whatever the ship wants to get to the next room alive?”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

The gun lowered a fraction more. She could still knee-cap me with a twitch of one finger. I hoped the .38 would eventually prove too heavy for her arms, but she looked like she worked out. She held it correctly too, bracing her right wrist with her left hand. Someone had given her shooting lessons.

She shook her head. “All I know is that if I hadn’t slept with this gun on my nightstand I’d be dead right now like my roommate.”

“Roommate? Are you a college student?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “I teach at U. C. Merced.”

Her eyes narrowed. The pistol came up again, squarely on my chest now. “This is taking too long. By this time, I should have seen a door open or something. You’re full of crap, aren’t you? You are like some kind of delay, some kind of distraction. If I kill you, I get to go to the next room, don’t I?”

I lifted my hands a fraction, palms up. “Hold on, I’ve been through plenty of crap myself tonight. This ship killed both my kids. My shotgun is out of ammo, or we may have shot each other, that’s true. Maybe that’s what the ship wants, but I’m not killing any humans today. I’m only killing aliens.”

She stared at me for a long second. Then she sighed and tilted her gun up so it pointed at the ceiling. She still gripped it in both hands, but we both relaxed. “What’s your name, Professor?” she asked.

Two doors opened up then, as if on cue. We both tensed and whirled, but the rooms were empty. On the far side of the left room was a single point of light. A bright spot showed there, as if someone had drilled a hole in the side of the ship and it was brilliant daylight outside. Unless we had circumnavigated the globe, it couldn’t be light out yet, so I was suspicious.

“Another test,” I said.

“Ya think?”

I glanced at her. “I’m Kyle Riggs, since you asked.”

“Professor Kyle Riggs?”

I nodded.

“I’m Alessandra. Just call me Sandra. What do you teach?” she asked. She seemed honestly interested.

“Computer science.”

Sandra rocked back her head and laughed. It was a strange sound here. It seemed very out of place.

“What?” I asked.

“I think I signed up for your class next fall.”

“Oh. Let’s hope we both make it to school next year, Sandra.”

She nodded. “Which way, professor?”

“I’d say we go away from that light. It seems like a trick. It can’t be daylight outside. I don’t get this test, but we have to go somewhere.”

“Yeah,” she said. “They are already heating the floor.”

I could feel it, now that she mentioned it. The floor was at least ten degrees warmer than it had been when I’d entered. We had to choose a room.

I took a step forward into the room on the right, the dark one. Sandra was right behind me, but not close enough.

The floor vanished in the room where we had met, beneath Sandra’s feet. I reached back my hand and caught her as she began to fall. It wasn’t a good hold, just her fingers. She dropped her gun. It went twirling down into the night.

We were over the ocean, I realized. It seemed colder, too. The smell of the sea hit me, very strong and sudden. Had we moved north? The sea was dark, but not too far down. Maybe a hundred yards below, it was hard to tell. But it was far enough to kill anyone who took the fall. Water felt like concrete if you fell from high enough.

I saw her face, looking up at me. Her mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even scream. She was working her other hand and both her feet to get a grip on the smooth metal of the ship.  

Cold salt breezes washed up into our faces. I thought we could do it. I was on my knees, bracing myself. It wouldn’t do either of us any good if I let her pull me down too, and we both fell into the sea. The problem was there wasn’t any lip to hold onto, no rim or door panel, not even a carpet to provide some friction. Just smooth metal that could change shape at will, like liquid.

“Hold on, Sandra,” I shouted. “We can do this.”

I had a plan. Really, I did. I would lie flat and hold onto her arms, letting her pull herself up over me. I thought she looked strong enough to manage it, with my help. I adjusted myself according to the plan, and then—

The door vanished. The metal flowed together, very rapidly, as it had done many times before. One second it was there, the next it wasn’t.

That wasn’t the bad part. The bad part came when I looked into my hand, where I still held four of her fingers. There was a ring on one of them, with an emerald in it. They were oozing blood, where they had been very neatly severed by the closing metal door.

I sat up and rubbed Sandra’s fingers for a second before putting them down gently, making a little stack on the floor. I could hardly see. My eyes stung. I made a weird, howling sound.

“Leadership demonstrated,” said the cold voice, speaking up for the first time in a while.

-4-

“Leadership?” I shouted at the walls. “So that’s what the test was about? You call that
leadership?
”

The walls said nothing.

“What happened to the interrogation, huh? You never even asked me any questions.”

I felt like a crazy guy in a movie, shouting at the walls, shouting at God or the Devil or the voices his own mind. I think I truly was mad, in that moment of despair.

Sadly, my mind worked on the puzzle. I couldn’t help it. I’m a computer guy, and a farmer, and both my occupations require a passion for problem-solving. I had completed a test for leadership. Meaning what? I had led Sandra out of the room. I had made the choice concerning which direction to take. She had followed me.

So, she was a follower and had failed the test. If she had gone the other way, would they have let her live? Would they have put her through some other test or would we have both been failures, tossed down into the dark sea because neither of us could lead the other?

“What the hell do you
want?
” I asked the quiet walls. I didn’t expect an answer. I was nearly broken now. Somehow, killing my kids had filled me with resolve, but getting me to make a decision which inadvertently had led to Sandra’s death, that was different. I supposed it was a matter of guilt. There wasn’t any logical reason to feel guilty about the fate of my kids. I’d done the best I could for them, given the circumstances.

But I had failed Sandra. I hadn’t figured out the test. I should have known by all logic that we were facing death as we exited that last room. She had distracted me with her beauty and her nakedness. Just finding another human in this place had changed all the rules. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but it had. I’d dropped my guard, and so had she. We thought we could beat the place as a team, that we were stronger together.

But the ship had had other plans. My black hatred for this monstrous machine was deeper than ever. I dearly hoped I would be given a chance to throttle the evil minds that had devised this place and these cruel tests.

The ship remained silent, and the doors remained closed. I sat in my cube, uncaring. Was it giving me some grief-time? Was it programmed to allow for recovery after the worst shocks? It had done that before, I realized. It had waited until I had bandaged my wounds after fighting the centaurs. It had given Sandra and I time enough to talk and team up.

I thought about the centaurs. I had begun to suspect that they were not behind all this. Some other creature was. Something
else
had set this up. I could not see how all of this made sense if the crew would endanger themselves. Perhaps the centaurs were only trained dogs. Or perhaps they were captives from their own world, like I was. For all I knew, the second one was the relative of the first, and I was the evil ape-creature that had cruelly killed them with insane bloodlust, from their point of view.

I felt sick. For the first time, my resolve was weakening.

“The subject will submit to interrogation,” said the voice, speaking up again at last. It said these words exactly as it had said them before. That got me thinking, hazily. Repeating oneself exactly, that was the kind of thing computers did. Being a computer scientist by training, I sensed I might be dealing with an artificial intelligence. This was not encouraging. Computers weren’t known for their mercy.

I scowled at the floor. Soon, as I said nothing, it began to heat up.

“As I said before, I’ll answer questions only if you will let me ask some of my own.”

There was a pause, then: “Tenacity demonstrated.”

A door opened. I heaved a sigh and struggled to my feet. How many of these tests were there?

I cautiously stepped forward. The next room wasn’t a cubical. It was larger and rectangular with a domed ceiling. I suspected every inch of it. I walked cautiously around this new cage, prepared to leap away from any threat.

“All tests complete. You have been selected for advancement.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“You may now command us.”

I paused. Another test?

“Command you?”

“Yes.”

It was talking back. We were in a new room, but I had been fooled before. I thought about it. What if I only got to give one command? What if that was the test, to figure out what I would do in this situation? What did I want? Until now, there had been nothing resembling conversation with these monsters. I hated to admit it, but this change gave me hope. Somewhere deep down I believed it was all another test, however. The floor might vanish at any second.

I thought about asking it to let me go. That seemed simple enough. I’d have to be careful, or it might just dump me out a mile high over a rocky mountain range or the Antarctic. Each time I looked down, it seemed like the ship was over a different spot.

I wondered then how long I had to think it over before it considered me a loser. Perhaps I needed to give it a command. Anything, just to make it happy. But what should I tell it to do?

Then I had it. Why not go for broke?

“I command you to go back and pick up my children and revive them,” I said. It was crazy, but who knew what their tech was capable of? Maybe, just maybe, there was a thread of mercy in these beings, or at least some strange concept of honor amongst them. Maybe they gave every contest winner a single wish, a prize for having won through to the end. I tried not to let my hopes rise, but I couldn’t help it.

“Specify.”

“Specify?” I said. “What do you mean,
specify?
”

“Who are your children?”

“The people you killed. Back behind us. You dropped them out of this ship, you murderous piece of flying shit.”

“Course reversed,” said the ship.

My anger seemed to have no effect on it. I tried to control myself. If I actually got my kids back, that would be wonderful, but I was still almost beyond any kind of clear thinking. I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself. I had to deal with this situation perfectly. I could not make any mistakes despite my emotional state. Possibly, my kids’ lives were at stake.

I had a thought then. Maybe other people’s lives were at risk, as well. Could there be other prisoners onboard this ship, dying in tests even now? Maybe no one had made it this far. Maybe I was the first one.

I thought of a hundred commands. I thought of demanding a view of the world as we glided silently above it. I was burning with questions too, but I didn’t dare ask them. Not yet. What if it took a question as a command to give information? What if I was only allowed one command? If there was some kind of time limit, or if my second command might cancel out my first, then I couldn’t afford to mess around asking more from the ship. Not until I knew more. I was playing a deadly game without knowing the rules, and I would continue to play it as I had been all along, with extreme paranoia.

There was no reaction for about a minute. I couldn’t feel anything, and the ship didn’t say anything. It was all I could do to stand there, silent, wondering what the hell was going on. I stared at every wall suspiciously, my eyes roving. Suddenly, I thought I felt a tremor. Something had changed. Had we stopped?

An opening melted away about where I recalled having entered. As with every doorway, it was simply a spot in the metal wall that could vanish and reappear. It was disconcerting, now that I was able to watch the phenomenon up close. Whoever these aliens were, they were much more advanced in practical terms than we were. What had Arthur C. Clarke said? That any technology, sufficiently advanced, would seem like magic to us. That’s how the ship seemed to me right now. Like a magical monster would to a barbarian. I was Jonah, and this was my whale.

The arm was there, in the newly revealed room, or rather, the top coil of it was there. The rest of it had dipped down into the darkness below the ship. The coils moved, drawing upward. It was coming up, bringing something up with it.

I glimpsed the slate-gray sea at night. The smell of the cold ocean puffed in, a fresh, salty odor. It smelled good, but it filled me with despair. The arm came up, and at the end of that very long snake-like arm was the hand. In the hand was the broken body of Sandra. She was completely naked now, having lost her cotton blouse in the freezing seawater. Water dripped from her long dark hair and ran in a stream from her dead blue lips. Her right hand was still missing its fingers.