Authors: James Gunn
“Is the captain among them?” Riley asked.
“No way of knowing,” Asha said, “unless we stopped and went through the clothing. The arachnoids don’t leave much.”
Several hundred meters later, the screen revealed a second lander and beyond that a scene of carnage even greater than the one not far from the first lander—a vast swath of scrub vegetation blown away by explosions and heaps of body parts strewn across the empty spaces.
“What kind of creatures are we facing?” Riley asked.
“Hungry, deadly, innumerable,” Asha said. “But they don’t like water—they need it, but they don’t swim or walk on it.” Something large bumped against the landing craft. “That’s one reason.”
“Are the others all dead then?” Tordor asked.
“Probably,” Asha said.
The view on the screen shifted ahead to a brown hill that transformed itself into a shifting, moving mass of something alive. When the scene expanded, the mass turned into individual creatures with big head parts and spidery limbs moving as a body toward the scene of destruction they had just witnessed.
“They’re like the arachnoids we saw on the runaway planet—only bigger,” Riley said.
“And hungrier,” Asha said. “And meaner. They’re the alpha species, and the others? Earlier evolutionary versions, or the degenerate offspring, or another related species. They don’t expose themselves much to sunlight, but the landing of the ships and their edible contents must have overcome their natural inclinations.”
Occasionally one of the spiderlike creatures would stumble. Although their four limbs and two forward appendages gave them remarkable balances, sometimes two or more would get entangled and a creature would go down in the moving mass and would disappear as its neighbors tore pieces from it.
“Creatures like this created the Transcendental Machine?” Riley asked.
“Or their remote ancestors, or a species that they destroyed,” Asha said.
The landing craft bumped against something ahead.
“We have reached the city,” Asha said.
* * *
The landing craft shifted, apparently at Trey’s direction after unspoken instructions from Asha, the inner hatch door opened and then the outer door, and light spilled into the small cabin onto Tordor’s sturdy legs, 4107’s spindly stalk and hairy roots, and Trey’s treads. But it was a small shaft of light, partially blocked by the arc of a translucent material that they soon perceived, as the craft’s ramp descended, as the top of a dark opening in a solid wall.
“What’s that?” Tordor asked.
“The discharge of the city’s drainage system,” Asha said. “Although it doesn’t rain much anymore, if it ever did, there is an occasional downpour that must be controlled, and it feeds the lake. There hasn’t been any upkeep for thousands, maybe millions of cycles, but it still functions.”
“Whoever built this place knew how to build well,” Riley said.
“If they hadn’t, the Transcendental Machine wouldn’t work, either,” Asha said. “We’re going to make our way through that into the heart of the city, where the machine can be found.”
She seemed to listen to Trey and 4107 and turned to Riley. “Trey points out that it doesn’t climb; Four one zero seven says the same thing. And the only way out of this tunnel will be to climb.”
“Dorians aren’t built for climbing, either,” Tordor said. “And we don’t like enclosed places.”
“You’ve spent a long time in the enclosed place of the
Geoffrey
,” Riley said.
“That I could control.”
“It’s the only way to avoid the arachnoids,” Asha said. She turned again to Trey and 4107. “I told them that they must find their own way into the center of the city, to follow the nearest large avenue. You—” she turned to Tordor, “will have to make a choice.”
Tordor started down the ramp, followed by Trey and 4107. At the bottom he turned and let the coffin-shaped alien and the flower perched on its top pass him. “I must choose the best chance—and that is with you and your knowledge of where to go and how to avoid the dangers that lie ahead.”
Asha turned to Riley. “I have grown attached to a machine and a flower. I hope they are very, very lucky. They will need all the luck they can get.” And then, as if sentimentality was a flaw, she said, “Let’s go.”
She and Riley picked up their bags and set off into the drain, followed by the elephantine Tordor.
As the light behind dwindled, the walls of the drainage tunnel began to glow with a soft yellow translucence. Asha led the way, followed by Tordor and then Riley. Only Asha knew where she was going, if she did, and he trusted Asha’s ability to defend herself against an attack by the Dorian, whose intentions would never be trusted, but he didn’t want to allow Tordor behind him.
“You are going to get us killed,” Riley’s pedia wailed, as if in the grasp of desperation. The pressure in Riley’s head increased.
The tunnel forked, and without hesitation Asha took the left branch. She
did
know where she was going—or pretended to. Tordor followed without question.
Small sections of the tunnel wall had turned dark, as if the magic had faded from them, but new glows provided sufficient light to proceed without the use of the devices Asha and Riley carried with them. At the third branch of the tunnel, where the wall luminescence had failed, a large, amorphous shape launched itself toward them.
Asha raised her hand and in the same movement fired a missile at the creature. It fell at their feet—a creature with six finlike limbs and a huge mouth in a head without apparent eyes. Asha’s missile had gone down the creature’s throat and struck a vital organ, and it was very dead.
“We’re taking a less dangerous way into the city?” Tordor said.
“The arachnoids are far more dangerous,” Asha said, “and far more numerous. But they don’t come down into the drainage tunnels, probably from some ancestral fear of being caught in a sudden flood of rainwater. Or creatures like these would never have evolved from the lake denizens to live in the tunnels.”
“And how many more of these will we encounter?” Riley asked.
“Perhaps a few more,” Asha said. “But we should avoid using explosives. These walls are sturdy and ancient, but they aren’t impervious, and we don’t want to announce ourselves to the arachnoids.”
There were, indeed, half a dozen more encounters, a couple by creatures like the one that Asha had dispatched, four more that were different, not only from the first but from each other. One of them was a scuttling machine with a large mouth equipped with feelers and several arms that ended in tools of some sort. One of those tools turned fiery; another spat what seemed to be plastic. Asha had to blow off all of its limbs before it stopped struggling.
“These machines must have kept the tunnels in repair,” Asha said. “After all these long-cycles, they are still functioning.”
One of the others was a small arachnoid, who was far more difficult to kill and got past Asha only to have Tordor slice off its forward part, perhaps its head, with his proboscis.
“An arachnoid that got lost or expelled or hungry enough to look for food in the drainage tunnel,” Asha said.
“And there are thousands above,” Riley said.
“Maybe millions.” Asha stopped and looked upward at a patch of light that illuminated something like a product of miscegenation between a ladder and a staircase. “Here we are,” she said.
* * *
Asha moved quickly upward to a grated covering that irised open at her touch. Tordor followed more clumsily on his stumpy legs. Riley emerged last, into the fading light of a single small blue sun. The red sun had dropped below the horizon during their time in the tunnel, and the remaining sun cast eerie shadows from the buildings that surrounded them.
Riley looked at the walls of the city, jagged crystalline structures glowing in the fading sunlight, and felt more uneasy than he had in any other alien setting. The experience was like finding himself in a canyon whose sides were shifting and strange beyond the power of his eyes to fix and the power of his mind to resolve into something familiar. He shook himself and looked at the avenue, which looked as shiny and new as the day it had been poured or extruded or laid by alien creatures. But debris and dust had blown in from the surrounding fields, and seeds had been blown in as well, or been deposited by alien creatures, and sprouted into small bushes and weeds along the edges. But the center of the straight, shining avenue was still open and stretched vacantly as far as they could see.
“What next?” Tordor asked.
“Now we have to find the Transcendental Machine,” Asha said.
“I thought you knew its location.”
“We didn’t enter the city here,” Asha said, “though we should have. And these buildings are disorienting. They’re all different, and yet they all look the same.”
“It’s a city,” Tordor said dismissively. “And where are the aliens you warned us about?”
“Don’t ask for trouble,” Asha said. “It will arrive soon enough. It will be dark soon, and unless we can find the cathedral quickly we’ll have to spend the night fighting them off.”
“Why do you call it a cathedral?” Tordor asked.
“That’s what it felt like,” she said, and set off down the avenue, looking one way and then the other like a hunting animal searching for a scent trail. Tordor followed impatiently, as if wanting to strike out on his own but hesitant to lose the advantage of Asha’s experience.
The avenue branched. Asha hesitated and then took the one that led to the right. As nearly as Riley could judge, that one led deeper into the city, perhaps more toward the center of this weird construction, ancient beyond imagination.
The procession continued without pausing for rest or food as the blue sun descended beyond the farthest spires. As the sky grew slowly darker, the buildings around them began to glow—or perhaps they had glowed before but their illumination had been obscured by the sunlight. The glow came in many colors and the colors shifted continually, some of them shading into hues that Riley had never seen before and even into suggestions of colors beyond his powers of perception. Riley looked away, feeling that he could become lost in their depths and never find his way out.
“Now. Now,” his pedia said. Riley thought that maybe it was becoming unhinged.
“Are we getting closer?” he asked.
“We can only hope so,” Asha said.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Tordor said.
Distantly came the sound of a curious warbling wail. Asha’s head came up.
“What’s that?” Riley asked.
“That’s the arachnoids,” Asha said. “They haven’t discovered us yet, but one of them, at least, has picked up our trail. The others will be joining the pursuit soon. It’s getting dark, and we have to find the cathedral soon or stop for the night.”
“We have lights,” Tordor said.
“Lights won’t hold off the arachnoids.”
“We have weapons,” Tordor said. “They aren’t used to weapons.”
“Weapons didn’t do the
Geoffrey
’s crew and passengers any good,” Asha said. “Weapons don’t work if the attackers far outnumber the defenders and the attackers don’t care about death,” Asha said. “They don’t seem to care.”
Tordor looked at Asha with deepset, inscrutable alien eyes. “You are misleading us,” he said. “You don’t want us to find the Transcendental Machine. At least you don’t want me to find it. I’m going to find it on my own.” He started off down a different avenue than the one they had been following.
“Stop!” Asha said. “You have no chance alone!”
Tordor continued.
“You’ll never find the machine,” she said. “I’ll take you there.”
Tordor didn’t stop. His massive shape began to dwindle in the distance and the gathering dark.
“Heavy-planet aliens are like that,” Riley said. “I’m surprised he stayed with us as long as he did.”
“I think he left because he wanted to lead the arachnoids away from us, maybe as penance for his earlier betrayal,” Asha said.
“Or for us to lead the arachnoids away from him,” Riley said.
Another warbling sound came from the direction Tordor was heading, and then another, closer perhaps. Tordor didn’t hesitate.
As soon as Tordor turned a corner into another avenue, Riley saw the first of the arachnoids pass by that avenue and come toward them with awkward movements that ate up distance with remarkable speed. It was huge, much bigger than the arachnoids they had seen on the runaway system’s planet or even the remains they had seen in the carnage leading from the landers. Behind it came half a dozen more, even bigger if that was possible. Two of them peeled off into the avenue that Tordor had taken.
“Get ready!” Asha said.
“Now you’ve done it!” Riley’s pedia said.
And then the arachnoids were upon them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They had fought off the first wave of arachnoids, although a few had gotten close enough to inflict some damage. Both of them were bleeding from numerous cuts. Asha dived into her pack for bandages that she applied to Riley’s wounds. Her own she ignored, and they began to heal, almost as he watched. Not only was she the Prophet, she had been transformed by the Transcendental Machine, and this enhancement of her body’s natural ability to restore itself was one more piece of evidence.
“Strange,” Riley said. “Our pilgrimage began with a barbarian attack and ends with another.”
“These are not the same kind of barbarians,” Asha said.
“Do you think we lost them?”
“They don’t live here,” Asha said. “Maybe they have some superstitious fear of the city. Ren thought they were not creatures on their way toward civilization but the remote descendants of the creatures who built this city—and maybe the entire star-empire along this spiral arm.”
“Why would that make them reluctant to follow us?”
“This is the place of the gods, or where the gods once lived,” Asha said. “And they have forgotten that they were once the gods they venerate.”
Riley looked around. The city—the end of the pilgrimage that had taken them across a multitude of stars and the even emptier space between two spiral arms—lay before them. Somewhere in its crystalline depths hid a magic shrine. The shrine that would turn them into gods, or into dust. “Dust thou art, to dust returnest,” said his pedia. Transcendence awaited.