Transcendental (30 page)

“My position needs no improvement.”

“That’s true,” Asha said, speaking for the first time. “And we would have trusted you if you had not killed Xi. That was your first uncharacteristic action and suggested that your story was no more truthful than Xi’s.”

“The question that we must answer now,” Riley said, “is whether we should kill you.”

“I can be more useful alive than dead,” Tordor said.

“That could be said of any creature,” Riley said. “The question is whether you are more dangerous alive than you would be useful.”

“I am good in a fight,” Tordor said, “as you have observed. And whoever the masters of the Transcendental Machine may be, you will need all the help you can muster to get past them.”

“That’s one for you,” Riley said. “On the other side of the scale is the matter of trust that you won’t seize the opportunity to eliminate us rather than the masters of the machine.”

“You two are capable of taking care of yourselves,” Tordor said. “But leaving that aside, I’m the only one who can communicate with Four one zero seven or Trey.”

“You are good at alien communication,” Riley said. “Probably because of a superior pedia, embedded somewhere in your massive body. But Asha is better because she doesn’t need a pedia. She can communicate with Trey, and Four one zero seven as well.”

“Then Asha really is the Prophet!” Tordor said.

“You knew that,” Riley said. “Once Asha inputted the coordinates, you knew who she was and informed Xi.”

“Actually long before,” Tordor said. “It was clear, almost as soon as we met, Riley, that you were an agent. You are not surprised,” he said to Asha. “No, of course not.” He looked back at Riley. “As soon as you deflected Xi’s attack on the climber. And yes, that was an act intended to draw you out. Though then I thought it was possible that you were the Prophet.”

“You give me more credit than I deserve,” Riley said.

“No, you were very good,” Tordor said, “but you were survivor good rather than Prophet good, and it was apparent that you were enhanced but not transcendent. It is Asha who was Prophet good, maybe transcendent, and clever enough to hide her abilities under the guise of ordinary competence. I wasn’t certain until you and Asha teamed up—the assassin and the victim.” He looked at Asha again. “Were you aware that Riley had instructions to kill you, just as Xi did—and I confess that I did as well? Of course you were. And that he was controlled by an implant? Of course. And you accepted all that and the danger and the possible frustration of whatever mission all this vast enterprise intends.”

“All of that,” Asha said.

“All true,” Riley said, “but with Asha’s help I have learned how to live with my implant. I was skeptical about the Transcendental Machine when this voyage began—who wouldn’t be?—but that skepticism has been transformed into belief, in Asha and her transcendental mission.”

“How can you be sure,” Tordor asked, “that by controlling your implant Asha has not simply taken its place and is controlling your emotions and behavior?”

“You don’t understand humans,” Riley said. “Humans develop emotional attachments that are as strong as implants, maybe stronger, and more to be trusted.”

“That isn’t true,” Riley’s pedia said. “Our fates are tied together, and you must listen to me.”

“I understand attachments between males,” Tordor said, “but the relationship between males and females are controlled by hormonal cycles whose imperatives overwhelm everything and then are gone.”

“You still haven’t convinced us that killing you is not a winning strategy,” Riley said.

“As for that,” Tordor said, “I am most valuable as a source of information. You are right—I don’t understand humans but I do understand power struggles, and we are caught in the middle of one.”

“You’re willing to tell us everything you know?” Riley asked.

“The great battle has begun,” Tordor said. “Far greater than the recent war between humans and the Galactic Federation, greater even than any of the wars that preceded the formation of the federation. This struggle in which we play a small but crucial role involves this entire arm of the galaxy, whose outcome will determine whether sentient civilization survives or destroys itself for epochs, maybe for all time.”

“And all this is tied up with the Transcendental Machine?” Riley asked.

“The powers that control the federation cannot allow transcendental creatures loose to destroy the civilization that sentient creatures have spent their evolutionary pasts creating.”

“I am such a creature,” Asha said. “I have been transformed by the Transcendental Machine. Am I so threatening?”

“Ah, yes,” Tordor said.

“We must be realists,” Riley said. “Civilizations cannot survive in stasis. They must keep moving, keep changing, to remain viable.”

“Small changes, perhaps,” Tordor said. “Big changes, no. At least that is what the powers believe.”

“What they fear,” Asha said, “is losing their own positions.”

“And for them that is the same as the destruction of civilization,” Tordor said.

“Transcendence is the only answer,” Riley said. “The truce in the human–Galactic Federation war was a warning. The present system is doomed to self-destruct unless it evolves into something more stable and more rational. Transcendence is the next step in galactic evolution.”

“Then you need me,” Tordor said. “I can help you reach your goal and frustrate those powers that worship stasis. It must be difficult to reach the machine.”

“It is,” Asha said.

“You’d help us?” Riley said.

“Better that than death,” Tordor said. “I’ll help you if you let me live, and maybe I, too, can find transcendence.”

“But you’re still an agent,” Riley said.

“As are we all,” Tordor said. “All those aboard the
Geoffrey
—every one had another agenda and the stories they told were just that—stories.”

“We’ll let you live,” Riley said.

The flower released the fronds that bound Tordor’s legs. Tordor rubbed the spots with his proboscis. Riley looked at Xi’s head, staring up at him with blank eyes.

Asha motioned to Trey and the barge plunged into the nexus, and again the universe dissolved in exquisite agonies.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Trey landed the captain’s barge as skillfully as if it had been built as a part of the ship’s equipment, killing orbital speed through gentle dips into the atmosphere and spiraling down to a plain next to a small lake where the ship could be refueled. On the far side of the lake the jagged towers of a city thrust angry fingers against a sky with two suns.

The trip from the nexus to the system and then to the planet that Asha identified as the location of the Transcendental Machine was another experience in boredom. It seemed to take forever, even with Trey nursing every joule of energy out of the engine and raising some issues of acceleration pressures that only Trey did not experience. Riley asked himself why he had ever considered space travel romantic.

“Because you are a romantic,” his pedia said. “Like all humans. It is their greatest strength and their greatest weakness, and will end up destroying them. Like this foolish feeling you have for the hazy person you call ‘Asha.’”

The mood in the ship was like the troubled quiet before battle. Tordor kept as much to himself as possible in the cramped quarters, and Riley moved carefully near Tordor’s lethal proboscis. Asha paid no attention to Tordor, apparently unconcerned about his treachery or his potential for murder. She spent time with Riley gathering weapons and other supplies into two packs.

“What are we preparing for?” Riley asked.

“What we experienced in the runaway system,” Asha said. “Only much worse.” She turned to Tordor. “You should prepare, too.”

“I am always prepared,” Tordor said calmly.

Riley remembered what he had told himself about heavy planet natives at the beginning of this journey.

The system they approached was even more ancient, if possible, than the one they had previously visited. The larger sun was redder, though it had not yet reached its expansion stage, and its half-dozen planets were still intact.

“This arm is older than ours,” Asha said. “Or at least it has some older systems, maybe a billion orbits older. Some of them may have been members of an older galaxy that collided with this one long-cycles ago. However it happened, these creatures evolved earlier and developed technology and an interstellar civilization long before our arm even got started. They’re far ahead of us.”

“And old,” Tordor said. “And degenerate.”

“Why degenerate?” Riley asked.

“If they were not,” Tordor said, “they would still be around and we would be their slaves or they would be our gods—maybe there is no difference. And all we have as evidence of their technological superiority is their nexus points. If, indeed, they created them.”

“And the Transcendental Machine,” Riley said

“They’re not the same as their forebears were,” Asha said. She shivered. “But they are terribly dangerous. And on their world where they have all the advantages. And the numbers.”

They had found the
Geoffrey
in orbit.

“I thought we were supposed to reach here first,” Riley said.

“The
Geoffrey
is faster than the barge,” Asha said, “and the captain is more skillful than I thought, or more desperate. He must have guessed that the coordinates would take him astray and taken a chance on another nexus.”

Asha had Trey hail the ship. After a moment she turned to the others. “Trey says that the only response comes from the ship’s computer; the ship reports that only a maintenance crew is left on board.”

“Then the captain took the passengers along,” Riley said.

“The
Geoffrey
reports that two landing craft left, one a half-period after the other,” Asha said. “And both after sundown last night.” She shivered again.

“Ah,” Tordor said. “Then the captain imprisoned the passengers while he began his exploration. After the passengers broke out, they followed in the second landing craft.”

“Or the other way around,” Riley said.

“Whichever way it was,” Asha said, “there are two groups, probably competing to find the machine first and use it before the other can reach it.” She shrugged. “They don’t understand the machine.”

“And you do,” Tordor said. It seemed like a statement rather than a question, even in the pedia’s serviceable translation.

“What else would you expect of the Prophet?” Asha said. “What they also don’t understand is that these creatures are most dangerous at night where they can attack from the darkness. They can see, or sense, in the dark.”

“Which is why you insisted we land in the morning,” Riley said.

“And why I fear for the lives of the other voyagers.”

“They who seek transcendence wager their lives,” Tordor said.

“If it is transcendence they seek and not power,” Riley said.

“It is the same.”

“And it is time for us to get ready while the day still lies ahead,” Asha said.

She and Riley turned back to their stowing of weapons, ammunition, and rations. Even Tordor added a few weapons to a bag that he slung from a strap around his huge head.

The barge’s computer reported that Riley’s and Asha’s inoculations would protect them. Tordor again refused. The inner door opened and, when it had closed, the outer door opened, and the travelers marched down the ramp, 4107 riding on Trey’s flat top.

*   *   *

Their first moments were deceptively calm. Scrubby vegetation, like trees or bushes, surrounded the area where their ship had crushed parts of it down in landing, taller and more verdant nearest the water. The plants grew from soil that was hard and cracked, like deserted farmland returning to nature, whatever nature meant on this planet. The air, though thick and rich enough for Riley and Asha, had a curious alien odor that reminded Riley of a visit he had made as a child to a miserable zoo exhibit of small Earth creatures brought to Mars, mostly mice, frogs, small reptiles, and insects, as if to preserve a feeble connection to the ancestral Earth.

Their small party had traveled a fourth of the way around the lake when they came upon one of the
Geoffrey
’s landing crafts. Not far from its open ramp, they discovered the scattered pieces of alien creatures, possibly arachnoid in nature, amidst them the unidentifiable remains of a crew member, probably human, and beyond that more alien body parts.

“We’ve got to change our plans,” Asha said. She turned back toward the landing craft.

“Why?” Tordor asked.

“The captain’s contingent was discovered sooner than I thought,” Asha said. “We need to use the landing craft.” She moved cautiously up the ramp, a knife in her hand. The others followed, Riley without hesitation, the others more slowly. The landing craft was deserted, and when Trey queried the craft’s computer it found no message.

“We can’t get much closer than this,” Tordor said. “The craft isn’t built for atmospheric maneuvering.”

“Not as a flyer,” Asha said. “We’re going to use it as a boat.”

“What about the crew?” Riley said.

“They won’t be needing it,” Asha said with a conviction that Riley found unarguable. Asha turned to Trey and communicated in a form that Riley’s pedia couldn’t understand or even perceive, but 4107 swung itself down from Trey’s top using a stanchion and the coffin-shaped alien inserted a cable into the control panel. The outer doors closed.

“All this is going to get us killed,” Riley’s pedia said. “You must kill the woman and return to the barge.” Riley felt a pressure building in his skull like the beginning of a giant headache.

“Can we do that?” Riley asked. “Use it as a boat?”

“If it can hold air in space, it can hold out water,” Asha said. The craft began to slide toward the lake’s edge on small bursts of exhaust and soon was floating. Trey straightened the craft and began to accelerate toward the farther shore. “Show us the shore, Trey,” Asha said, as if allowing the others to share her silent communication with the coffin-shaped alien.

The screen above the control panel sprang alive. The shoreline appeared first and expanded to a view of the land itself that slowly got close until they could discern the vegetation and then places where it had been shattered, and finally heaps of bodies, aliens and crew members mixed.