The Abyss Beyond Dreams

  ‘Ask a Skylord. They’ll tell you it’s because we’re not fulfilled.’

  ‘Screw the Skylords. There’s got to be some reason.’

  ‘Eat. Sleep. Once we’ve all recovered from the tank yank, we’ll have some functioning neurons and know what to do.’

  ‘Sure.’ Laura sprayed some salve on her red-raw hand, wincing at all the little blisters, then peeled the wrapper off a taco – meals in freefall were always tacos or something similar; bread produced crumbs that messed with the filters and jammed in bad places. ‘How long are we going to give them?’

  ‘We’ll find them. Don’t worry.’

  ‘You said it. The shuttle’s screwed. If we’re going to help them, we need the Vermillion. Crap, I hope they got down okay.’

  ‘Once we’re outside the Forest, we’ll make contact again.’

  ‘Joey couldn’t spot them on the surface.’

  ‘Okay, either you go to sleep, or I grab an aerosol from that medic kit and put you under.’

  ‘All right. All right.’ Laura settled on a couch and fastened the straps – not too tight. It was pointless because she knew she couldn’t sleep. Her hand throbbed. She chewed on the taco again, tasting nothing. She was about to start asking what Ayanna thought about using the Viking drill on the tree itself, when she fell asleep.

  *

  Something shook Laura roughly. For a confused moment she thought she was being tank yanked again; the whole thing was like a fading dream that was just too real.

  ‘Wake up,’ Ayanna was saying, her face centimetres away. Behind the face, thoughts shone with delight and relief – a lot of relief. ‘Wake up. They’re back. They’re coming back.’

  ‘What?’ Laura asked sluggishly. ‘Who?’

  ‘Rojas and Ibu. The exopod is coming back.’

  ‘Huh?’ She tried to sit up. The couch straps dug in, and she fumbled round to release them. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ayanna said, her expression half fearful. ‘We’ve lost most of the Mk16bs now. I noticed it was moving a minute ago.’

  ‘Hell’s teeth. What did they say?’

  ‘There’s no contact. All I know is the exopod’s coming, and it’s not the greatest bit of flying I’ve ever seen.’

  Laura felt a little burst of alarm. ‘No contact? Is the signal down again?’

  ‘No. The exopod is transmitting. They’re just not saying anything. Hell, that’s no surprise. Our systems have taken a real beating from the Void.’

  Laura tried to get her breathing under control. She looked round the forward cabin. There were a lot of red symbols shining on the console. Five of the blue emergency lighting strips were dark. And she was sure it was several degrees colder. ‘What’s their ETA?’ As she said it, she noticed her exovision time display. Ten hours! She’d been asleep for ten hours. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  Ayanna gave her a sheepish glance. ‘I fell asleep myself. Only woke up an hour ago.’

  Laura winced as she finished releasing the last strap with her burnt hand. The skin was still red, but the salve had turned the blisters hard. For one silly moment she wondered if the Void had glitched the spray’s chemical structure, rendering the salve useless – or worse.

  Several screens on the console were running feeds from Shuttle Fourteen’s external cameras. They all showed her the exopod gliding sedately towards them.

  She anchored herself on the front couch and stared through the windscreen. Sure enough, the exopod was close enough to show as a small speck against the glowing crystal, its strobes still flashing away faithfully. ‘It’s them,’ she said in amazement.

  ‘I told you,’ Ayanna said happily. ‘They’re back.’

  ‘Where the hell were they?’

  ‘They had to be inside the distortion tree,’ Joey said.

  ‘Right.’ Laura hadn’t taken her eyes off the exopod. Her u-shadow had a narrow link to the shuttle’s faltering network, which was monitoring the exopod’s signal. Only the basic telemetry was coming in. ‘Have any of the Mk24s reappeared?’

  ‘No,’ Ayanna said.

  ‘I just don’t get any of this. Why—?’

  ‘Just ask them,’ Joey said. For a moment he managed to force his mouth into a smile.

  The three of them went back through the service compartment. Joey lagged behind, his spasming limbs making it difficult for him to manoeuvre as easily as the others. Laura resisted the urge to offer him any help. He was way too proud for that.

  Once they were in the EVA hangar her u-shadow lost the link to Fourteen’s network. She grabbed the handholds in front of a backup console on the bulkhead and activated its manual functions. Two screens slid out, showing her that the exopod was a lot closer.

  ‘I’m opening the outer door,’ she said.

  ‘Wait,’ Joey’s mental voice urged her as he wriggled his way through the hatch. ‘We don’t actually know what’s inside the exopod.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Laura said. ‘What do you think’s inside? A Prime motile?’ Even as she said it, her secondary routines pulled an image file from her storage lacuna, showing her the eggs of a Prime. They were nothing like the globes on the distortion tree. Bollocks, I’m getting paranoid, she thought.

  ‘I don’t know. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Why haven’t they ordered the airlock door to open?’

  ‘With the state of our communications? Come on!’ she appealed to Ayanna.

  ‘I’d be happier knowing,’ Ayanna said awkwardly.

  ‘And how are we going to do that?’

  ‘Wait until it’s on the docking cradle, but don’t open the airlock,’ Joey said. ‘The umbilical will plug in and we’ll have a decent link.’

  ‘Well?’ Laura asked Ayanna.

  ‘Seems reasonable.’

  Laura turned back to the console, and keyed in the cradle recovery sequence. She felt a tiny vibration run through Fourteen’s structure. On the screen, long electromuscle arms were pushing the exopod’s cradle out from the rear of the shuttle.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Joey’s mental voice was twinned with a great deal of concern.

  Laura peered at the screen showing the approaching exopod. Its cluster of electromuscle tentacles were curled protectively round one of the dark globes from the distortion tree. ‘They can’t be serious,’ she exclaimed. ‘How did they detach it?’

  ‘Are you going to let them in carrying that thing?’ Joey asked.

  Ayanna shot Laura a glance, her thoughts emanating all kinds of uncertainty. ‘They wouldn’t bring anything harmful into the shuttle. They know the protocols.’

  ‘If it’s them,’ Joey said. ‘If they haven’t been brainwashed. We don’t know what we’re dealing with!’

  ‘What do you think?’ Ayanna asked.

  ‘I think Joey may have a point,’ Laura said reluctantly. Her delight at seeing the exopod return was dwindling fast. Carrying the alien globe back to Fourteen was unusual, at the very least. ‘Let them dock on the cradle, but keep the airlock closed until we establish just what’s going on.’

  ‘Right,’ Ayanna said. ‘Good call.’

  It took several minutes for the pilot to manoeuvre the exopod over the cradle. Laura made no comment about that. Rojas had certainly seemed more competent when the little craft was flying out to the distortion tree.

  ‘Are they eggs?’ Joey asked as they watched the exopod wobble about unsteadily.

  ‘We know they contain organic matter,’ Laura said slowly, wishing she’d thought more about the problem before. ‘And we’ve seen a batch flying down to the planet. Logically they’re eggs or seeds, or some kind of biological agent.’

  ‘Agent?’

  ‘They come from the trees, which are completely different objects. Shape, nature, material – none of it’s the same. So . . . I’d say the trees manufacture the globes molecule by molecule. And on this scale, that probably means it’s a bioforming system. These trees arrive at a planet in a new star system and start converting it t
o the kind of environment their creators live in.’

  ‘That works for me,’ Ayanna said.

  ‘So what are the Skylords?’ Joey asked.

  ‘Oh, bollocks to you, Joey,’ Laura snapped at him. ‘They’re the tugboats? I don’t know!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Let’s just keep it calm, shall we?’ Ayanna said.

  Laura made an effort to damp her temper down. The screen was showing her the cradle arms reaching out and clamping onto the base of the exopod. One of them carried the data umbilical.

  Laura keyed in a series of instructions. The console’s second screen played the feed from the exopod’s internal camera. Laura let out a small gasp of relief. Behind her, Ayanna made an almost identical sound.

  The camera was set near the top of the exopod’s cabin. It looked down on Rojas and Ibu suspended in the webs. Both of them were in their suits – without helmets.

  ‘Welcome back, guys,’ she said inanely.

  They both looked up at the camera. Ibu grinned weakly. It looked to be a big effort on his part.

  ‘Good to hear your voice,’ he said croakily.

  ‘This is Ayanna. What happened? Where have you been?’

  ‘We’ve been inside.’

  ‘Inside what?’ Laura said. ‘The tree is solid.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Ibu said. ‘There’s all kinds of chambers in there.’

  ‘Where? The drone sensors showed us a solid structure. How did you get in? You were stuck to that globe when the links went down.’

  ‘There are entrances along the bottom of the folds. The crystal just morphs like our malmetal and plyplastic.’

  ‘Can you let us in now, please?’ Rojas said. His voice croaked like Ibu’s. It was as if both of them had caught laryngitis.

  ‘Ask him about the globe,’ Joey’s mental voice urged.

  ‘Rojas,’ Ayanna said, ‘why have you brought one of the globes back?’

  Rojas looked away from the camera, studying the displays on the bulkhead in front of him. ‘Analysis.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Analysis.’

  ‘Hang on. Wait,’ Laura said. ‘What have you been doing inside the tree? How did you get in and out? Why were you in there so long? You’ve been out of contact the whole time. You know that’s against every protocol ever written.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Ibu said. ‘It’s fascinating in there. You’ll have to come in, Laura.’

  ‘What’s happened to your voice?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Have you been exposed to the alien environment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what—’

  ‘Nothing; we’re fine. The exopod’s systems are glitching. That’s the problem.’

  ‘What’s in the tree?’ Laura asked, trying to keep her concern from creeping into her voice.

  ‘Nothing. We think the cavities are conduits of some kind. We’ll go over the recordings when we’re back inside.’

  ‘What was wonderful?’ Joey asked. ‘Ibu said the globes were wonderful, Rojas said they were awesome. ‘Why?’

  ‘Ibu,’ Ayanna said, ‘what was awesome about the globe you got stuck on?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need to come in,’ Rojas said.

  ‘You said it was wonderful. What did you mean?’

  ‘This whole place is wonderful, that’s all.’

  ‘Please open the EVA hangar door,’ Rojas said. ‘We need to get the exopod inside.’

  ‘Rojas, I can’t let you bring that globe into Fourteen,’ Ayanna said. ‘Please release it.’

  ‘We need to examine it,’ Rojas said. He still wasn’t looking up at the camera any more. His fingers were moving fast across the keypads in front of him.

  ‘Yes, we will, but after we’ve established it’s safe. You know the protocol.’

  ‘Open the door.’

  ‘Jettison the globe,’ Laura said firmly. ‘It won’t go anywhere. We can run tests on it out there.’

  A set of graphics on the console turned from amber to blue. The EVA hangar lights flickered. Laura could feel a slight vibration through the handholds.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ Ayanna exclaimed. ‘He’s overridden the airlock. It’s opening.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Laura grunted.

  They all turned to face the airlock’s inner door, just past the remaining exopod. Caution lights were shining purple.

  ‘What do we do?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Are there any weapons on board?’ Joey asked.

  Ayanna gave him a startled glance. ‘Crap. There’s probably something in the emergency landing pack.’

  ‘It won’t come to that,’ Laura said, but it was more like a mantra than anything she believed. Nobody in this era needed weapons; biononics could be configured into quite aggressive energy functions if anyone was seriously threatened.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to mess with some of the engineering tools,’ Joey said.

  ‘Are they real?’ Laura asked, mostly to herself. The screen showed her that the docking cradle had finished pulling the exopod inside the EVA hangar airlock. ‘Is that Ibu and Rojas?’

  ‘What the hell else can they be?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Oh, fuck, what is happening?’ Her mental shielding was cracking open, flooding the EVA hangar with raw fright.

  Laura found herself in the centre of swirling shadows. They were growing fangs and teeth, turning from phantom grey spectres to solid black figures. Thousands of people shrieking somewhere far away were growing closer. She raised her hands in reflex to ward them off, worried that perhaps Ayanna’s telekinesis would give substance to her imagination. ‘Ayanna! For fuck’s sake get a grip.’

  ‘I don’t want them in the shuttle,’ Ayanna wailed.

  ‘Nobody does! We can’t stop the bastards, now. We’ll just have to manage them when they do get in.’

  Ayanna looked just as panicked as before, but the outpouring of emotion reduced slightly.

  Joey spun round to face the other way. ‘Can we lock the hatch to the silo compartment?’

  ‘If we can lock it, Rojas can sure as shit unlock it,’ Laura said.

  ‘Then we break it,’ Joey said. ‘Use telekinesis, wreck the circuits behind the bulkhead.’

  Laura glanced at the hatchway herself. It was incredibly tempting. The lights above the exopod airlock turned from purple to green. The malmetal door started to peel open.

  ‘Oh bollocks,’ Laura muttered. The hatchway to the silo compartment was barely four metres away. She was sure she could get through in a couple of seconds if she powerdived for it – assuming she aimed right, no guarantee of that given her free-fall skill level. Her ESP started to pry around the bulkhead, reducing it to a translucent blue sheet in her mind. It was threaded with dozens of cable conduits. Which ones control the hatch?

  The docking cradle trundled into the EVA hangar and placed the exopod on its lockdown clamps. All Laura could do was stare at the alien globe the electromuscle tentacles were clutching. Her ESP revealed nothing; it was a blank zone inside her perceptive field. And yet . . . She smiled, knowing now that there was no reason to worry. Whatever it contained was absorbing Ayanna’s malicious phantoms. A temperate sense of relief filled the EVA hangar. And her heart was racing away inside her chest.

  ‘Fight it!’ Joey’s mental voice told her, a jarring discord to the tranquillity Laura was feeling.

  ‘Oh no!’ Laura groaned. ‘No no no!’ Her own dread at the realization of what was happening was enough to damp down the emotional balm the alien globe was giving off. She saw Ayanna had started to move towards the globe, and grabbed her arm. ‘Stop! Ayanna, for crap’s sake! It’s like a narcomeme.’

  Ayanna’s head twisted back to stare at Laura, and now she really looked frightened.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Joey said.

  Laura swung round on the handholds, and prepared to push off against the bulkhead. She heard the exopod’s hatch open. There was a brief hiss of pressure equalization. And even though she knew it was stupid, she
paused to glance at what was coming out.

  Ibu slid out smoothly, catching hold of a handhold on the EVA hangar’s wall. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, and his voice was still weird, as if there was fluid in his throat.

  ‘You tell me,’ she barked. ‘What is that thing?’

  ‘Who knows? We brought it here to study.’ He was bending his knees, swinging round slightly so his feet were pressed against the exopod’s hull.

  Ready to pounce, Laura thought.

  Rojas glided easily out of the hatch.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Joey’s mental voice shouted. He began scrambling along the bulkhead, hauling himself towards the hatch into the silo compartment. Shaking arms made him miss the second handhold.

  Ibu kicked off, flashing along the middle of the EVA hangar like a human missile. Rojas followed.

  Laura screamed and jumped for the hatch. Her foot caught Joey’s shoulder and the collision flicked her sideways. She spun and slapped at the bulkhead, righting her trajectory. Ayanna was right beside her.

  Rojas caught Joey’s ankle. The squeal that came through Joey’s spasming throat was like a pig grunting. Then Rojas was clambering along the hyperspace theorist as if the two were caught in some weird dance move. It quickly turned into a furious wrestling match as they squirmed against each other.

  Again, Laura hesitated. Her hand grasped the hatch rim. Ibu was close, reaching forwards. And Ayanna was level with her. ‘Go!’ Laura yelped. Ayanna wriggled through the hatchway with the agility of an eel.

  Joey’s cries of dread were echoing round the hangar. Ibu’s hand clamped round Laura’s shin. She squealed, first at the shock, then the yell grew wilder as she realized just how tight and painful his grip was. Stronger than any normal human. ‘What the—’

  His other hand clamped round her right ankle. She tried to pull herself through the hatch into the silo compartment, but she couldn’t move. Now Ibu began to pull her the other way. She felt her arms starting to straighten out as his unnatural strength over-powered her, tugging her back. Various ancient unarmed combat routines began to unfold from her storage lacuna, slipping into the macrocellular clusters. But Laura didn’t wait; she instinctively lashed out with her free foot, catching Ibu on the side of his head.