Ghostworld (Deathstalker Prelude) (14 page)

“We need to find the aliens,” said Silence. “They can’t be allowed to get away with this.”

“Captain,” said Odin quietly in his ear, “I have been examining the memory crystal discovered on the crashed alien vessel, and I have finally managed to access the information within. I have arranged it in as palatable a form as possible. I strongly suggest that you study the information now.”

“All right,” said Silence. “Run it for me first, then run it for Carrion and the Investigator, while I stand watch. Be prepared to break off at a moment’s notice if necessary.”

“Of course, Captain. Stand by.”

Silence’s vision shimmered, and was suddenly replaced by exotic alien vistas as the AI patched the memory crystal directly into his comm implant.

Tall towers, draped in strands of glass and pearl, under a mercury sky. Silvered clouds boil slowly around a sun too bright to look at. The towers stand alone on an endless plain. There are dim cavities in the sides that might be entrances. Something living curls around the bases of the towers, unfurling wide, jagged petals to the brilliant sun. The images are blurred, seen through a fluid, distorting haze.

A series of similar images come and go, in which the details change but the scene remains the same. The towers age but do not fall, the strands twisting and shuddering as time shakes them. More towers spring up, covering the plain. In and out of the cavities, around the bases of the towers, near and far, are shadowy figures, never still, always blurs. It is as though film exposures, taken some time apart, have been laid side by side to give an illusion of movement.

Something is speaking, though not with words. Information is passed, thick with meaning.

The towers are everywhere, linked by bridges of gossamer webbing. Life is everywhere, leaping, soaring, growing. There is no room. Time passes. There is war among the towers. Fires burn and terrible energies blaze. The dead are everywhere. Life is everywhere.

A line of shapes, huge and metallic, each different from the next, appear on the plain. They throw themselves up into the mercury sky, and are gone.

Silence rocked on his feet as the images left his eyes, and would have fallen if Frost hadn’t steadied him. He leaned on her a moment, till his legs steadied, and then nodded to the Investigator that he was all right. He waited a moment while Odin ran the alien memories through Carrion and Frost’s minds, and then they looked at each other with new eyes.

“Incredible,” said Frost. “A species, a civilisation, where the boundaries between animate and inanimate, living and non-living, have been blurred and forgotten. Everything there was alive, struggling for space and survival.”

“No room anywhere, anymore,” said Carrion. “So they built or grew starships and set off to find new worlds. New planets to conquer, to infest, to make over in their image. That’s what’s happening here. The Base has been remade into something more … familiar.”

“More than that,” said Frost. “Base Thirteen is a beacon, calling others of its kind. They have to be stopped, here on the Rim, while they’re still confined to one world. If this were to spread … The Empire must be warned. The aliens must be destroyed.”

“Not aliens,” said Silence. “Just the one. Each of those ships carried a single creature. Or rather, each of those ships was a single creature. I sensed it. Our visitor left its shell after the ship crashed, and made a new shell for itself here, in Base Thirteen. We have to find it, and kill it. If we can. I’m not sure if it is life, as we understand it.”

“We can’t take chances,” said Frost. “Not with something like this. Our very species is at risk. Our best bet is to return to the
Darkwind
and use atomics on the Base until nothing’s left but a few grains of dust.”

Silence looked at Carrion, who nodded slowly. “We’ll have to find the force shield generator and shut down the screen first.”

“Are you hearing all this, Odin?” said Silence. “How are your repairs going? Can you be ready to take off once we’ve shut down the force screen?”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” said the AI, “but I can’t take you anywhere. You have all been exposed to the alien organism. The probability is high that you are yourselves infected. I cannot risk your passing on that infection to the
Darkwind.”

“Odin, this is a direct order from your Captain,” said Silence. “Stand by to carry us back up to the
Darkwind
, where we can be kept in Quarantine …”

“I’m sorry, Captain. My standing orders override yours. You will remain here. The pinnace is barred to you.”

Carrion laughed softly. “Isn’t that the bottom line with the Empire, John? Everyone’s expendable. Everyone.”

CHAPTER NINE

Unexpected Complications

SILENCE fell helplessly through darkness without end. The bitter air was thick with the stench of sulphur and burning blood. Bright lights flared about him, flashing past like blazing comets. There were voices in the dark, loud and meaningless, interspersed with screams and laughter. Silence didn’t know how long he’d been falling, but it felt like an eternity. He thrashed about, hands searching frantically for something that might slow his fall, but there was only the dark and the cold wind rushing past him. He forced himself to stay calm, his mind racing. Where was he, and how the hell had he got there? Where were the others? Where was Carrion?

“Right here, Captain.”

And suddenly he was standing on a narrow stairway, its cracked marble steps falling away into infinity. Carrion stood beside him, calm and unruffled. The cold wind stirred his hair, and his cloak swirled around him like billowing wings. He looked down at the endless drop, and then looked at Silence, unmoved.

“I did warn you, Captain. Trips like this are always dangerous.”

“Trip?” said Silence, his voice harsh to hide the uncertainty. “Where are we, Carrion?”

“Where you insisted I take you. Inside Diana Vertue’s mind.”

Memories returned in a rush. Diana had seen the marines die, ripped apart before her. Horror and survivor’s guilt had overwhelmed her mind, until the only way to save her sanity had been to deny it had ever happened. She forgot it all, until she was forced to remember. And then, rather than face the horror again, she’d shut herself away inside her own mind, where nothing could reach her and nothing could harm her. She shut herself down and stood staring blindly, mute and comatose, safe at last.

Carrion couldn’t reach her with his esp, but he did have one suggestion. It was risky and uncertain, dangerous both to him and the espers, but he could drop his shields and join his mind directly with Diana’s. Make her pain his own.
If you’re going in there, I’m going in with you
, Silence had said.
After all, I am her father
. Carrion had argued, and Silence hadn’t listened. He had no choice. He needed the esper if he was to complete this mission successfully. And she was his daughter, after all.

Lights blazed in the darkness, guttered, and were gone. Voices came and went, shrill and inhuman. And the wind rose and fell, blowing out of nowhere.

“Every light is a thought,” said Carrion softly. “Every voice a memory. And the rising and falling of the wind is the force of her will. We’re a part of her mind now, as vulnerable as she is. Either we find a remedy for her madness, a way for her to live with her memories, or we’ll never leave here.”

“Where did the stairway come from?” said Silence, as much for the comfort of hearing his own voice as anything else.

“It’s a construct created by our joined minds; a symbol of constancy, to help us feel more secure. You must expect strange things here, Captain. The mind deals in symbols. Particularly when dealing with things it doesn’t really want to think about.”

He looked down, and Silence followed his gaze. The stairway suddenly came to an end not far below, in a shimmering silvery plain that stretched away in all directions further than the eye could follow. And there, at the foot of the stairs, was a great white-walled house with strange lights burning in its windows.

“That is Diana’s consciousness,” said the outlaw. “Or how she perceives it. We have to enter the house and put right the damage there, if we can. We’d do well to make haste. Time isn’t a factor; a few days here can be only a few seconds in the real world. But the mind is a dangerous place to visit. All the things we really fear are here, with nothing to protect us from them save the strength of our own wills. There are no rules here, Captain, only varying degrees of necessity.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” said Silence, and he started down the stairs towards the great white house.

The house drew close by slow degrees, as though reluctant to accept any visitors. Silence began to get the feeling there was something else in the darkness with them. He looked unobtrusively about him, but the dark turned aside his gaze with contemptuous ease. He heard slow, regular breathing, and what might have been the flapping of giant wings. The sounds came first from one side and then the other, growing steadily closer, nearer. He sensed a hot, arid presence watching from the concealing darkness.

“Ignore it, Captain,” said Carrion softly. “Whatever it is, we don’t want to meet it. Concentrate on the house. Just the house.”

And suddenly they were at the foot of the stairway, the house looming over them, shining like a moon. The great structure looked old-fashioned and curiously stylized, as though built more for viewing than actual use. The strange lights were gone, and the windows held only darkness, like so many watching eyes. A sudden chill stabbed through Silence as he finally recognised what he was looking at. It was the doll’s house he’d bought Diana for her fifth birthday. When she’d still been his child, before the Empire took her from him. He looked at the door before him. It was a great featureless slab of wood, without knocker or handle.

“What do we do now?” he asked. His voice seemed to echo on and on, falling away into disturbing whispers.

“We go in,” said Carrion evenly. “And then we talk to Diana, or whatever part of her she chooses to show us. We can’t force her to come back with us. We have to persuade her. If we can.”

He stepped forward and knocked firmly on the door. The sound was flat and empty, not at all like a door should sound. It swung slowly open before them, revealing a brightly lit hallway. Silence looked at Carrion, who gestured for him to lead the way. Silence stepped resolutely forward, Carrion a step behind him. The door closed behind them with a solid, final sound. The hallway stretched ahead of them, impossibly long. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, and doors led off from the hallway at regular intervals.

“The mind is a labyrinth,” said Carrion. “Let’s hope we don’t meet the Minotaur.”

“There might not be one,” said Silence.

“There’s always a Minotaur. If we’re lucky, there’ll also be a guide.”

As though the house had been listening all along, and waiting for the word to be spoken, a door opened not far away, and a young child stepped out into the hallway. Diana, six years old, in her party dress. There were electrode burns on her forehead.

“Do you recognise the image, John?” said Carrion. “Do you know why she chose this of all her selves to show us? This is what she looked like when the Empire was training her how to use her esp. Or to be more exact, when not to. The first thing all espers have to learn isobedience—to use their esp only when ordered to. Espers are controlled through pain-avoidance conditioning, a long and painful process whose only justification is that it works. No one uses the word torture. Espers have no rights. They’re a commodity, to be used and discarded as needed. And if that means attaching electrodes to a young child and turning up the voltage, well, you can’t make an omelette, and all that. No, Captain; don’t look away. This is your doing.”

“I didn’t know,” said Silence.

“You didn’t want to know. You closed your eyes to evidence, and your mind to rumours, and told yourself it was all for the best. You sent your daughter to Hell, John, and part of her is always there, endlessly suffering, endlessly screaming. And we’re going to have to walk through it to reach her.” Carrion leaned forward, his voice gentle as he spoke to the child before him. “Diana, we need to talk to you. Can you talk to us?”

The child turned, put out her hands for them to take, and led them down the hallway. The small hand was warm and soft and very real in Silence’s grasp. Ghosts came and walked in the hall with them, pale and silent people who had been important to Diana in her short life. Silence didn’t recognise any of them. There was no sign of him among the ghosts. They filed past in eerie silence, their eyes preoccupied, their thoughts somewhere else. Some of them bore the mark of the electrodes on their skin. Some were screaming soundlessly, some were clearly insane, and too many of them were children.

Silence looked away, studying the doors they passed. Some were closed and some were open. The rooms held moments from Diana’s past, endlessly repeating like flies trapped in amber. Most were scenes of suffering, mental or physical and often both.
You sent your daughter to Hell, John
. Silence wanted to look away, but wouldn’t let himself. And then they came to a closed door, behind which a smallchild sobbed endlessly, without comfort or hope, and Silence stopped. Carrion and Diana stopped with him. Silence stared at the door, his hands clenched unknowingly into fists, and it seemed to him that if he opened that door and stepped through, he could save his daughter and undo the evil that had been done to her. Carrion looked at him sharply, and there was something in the outlaw’s eyes that might have been fear.

“There’s nothing you can do, John. What you’re hearing is the past. It’s already happened. In some deep part of our mind everything that ever hurt or scared us is still there, waiting for a chance to attach itself to us again. If you open that door and let loose what’s in that room, you condemn Diana to Hell again, and us with her. Come away, John. The odds are you’ll have to face worse than this before we reach the core mentality—the deep hidden centre of Diana, the self that never sleeps.”

“We shouldn’t be here,” said Silence. “This is more than just an invasion of privacy. There are things no one should have to see or remember.”

“You’re right,” said Carrion. “But we don’t have any choice. Diana’s gone too deep into herself to find her way out again without help. I’m not even sure I can get us out of here without Diana’s cooperation. If I try it alone, I could destroy her mind, or worse. I told you all this before we came here. It’s a bit late to be getting an attack of scruples.”

“She’s my daughter, Sean.”

“No, John. You gave up any claim on her, or her on you, when you handed her over to the Empire mind-techs. We have to go on, John. We have to go deeper.”

Silence nodded stiffly, and allowed his daughter and the man who used to be his friend to lead him on down the hall. Ghosts swirled around them, lost in the past, and there were doors beyond number. Silence came to another closed door behind which came screams of hate and fury. Somethinghuge and powerful slammed against the door, rattling it in its frame, splintering the thick wood. Diana pulled insistently at Silence’s arm.

“Don’t stop here. It’s dangerous. She might get out.”

Silence allowed her to pull him away from the door, and they continued on their way. The light grew gradually dimmer, and the floor no longer seemed as solid under his feet as it had. And then, out of the darkness, Ripper and Stasiak came striding forward, leaving bloody footprints behind them. Silence stepped to one side to let them pass, but they stopped before him, blocking the way. They stared at Silence, and tears of blood ran down from their unblinking eyes.

“Why did you do it, Captain?” Stasiak whispered. “Why did you bring us down here and then abandon us? Please, Captain, I want to go home. Don’t leave me here in the dark.”

“They’re just images,” said Carrion. “Your mind gives them strength. They can’t harm us, unless you let them.”

“Please, Captain,” said Ripper. “Don’t leave us here.”

“Whatever happens,” said Silence steadily, “I swear I won’t leave you in Base Thirteen. One way or another, I promise I’ll set you free.”

He started forward, with Carrion and Diana, and the marines stepped aside to let them pass. Doors came and went, and ghosts walked, but finally the hall ended in a single huge door. The child Diana let go of Silence’s and Carrion’s hands, produced a large brass key from somewhere, and unlocked the door. She pushed it open easily, despite its apparent weight, and gestured for the two men to enter. They did so cautiously, and found themselves in a small, comfortably furnished room in which a small fire crackled pleasantly in an open hearth. Diana, age nineteen, her rightful age again, sat at her ease in one of the chairs by the fire. Silence looked slowly about him, frowning. The child was gone. The door shut quietly behind them.

“I know this place,” said Silence. “I remember this. Elaine and I brought Diana here when she was very small. It was our last holiday together.”

“Probably why she chose this particular memory to hide herself in,” said Carrion. “She felt safe here. The last place she ever felt safe and protected from the outside world.”

They looked at Diana, sitting relaxed in the large, overstuffed chair.
It wasn’t really that big
, realised Silence.
She just remembers it that way because she was so small
Outside, he could hear rain falling. It had rained all through that holiday, and he and Elaine and Diana spent the long days playing games and charades and stuffing themselves with good food. Not much of a memory to make a heaven out of. But when it’s all you’ve got …

“Diana,” he said finally. “It’s me. Your father. I’ve come to fetch you. It’s time to go.”

“I don’t want to go,” said Diana. “There’s something out there. In the dark. It frightens me.”

“You can’t stay here,” said Carrion. “The longer you stay, the harder you’ll find it to leave.”

“I don’t want to leave,” said Diana. “I’m safe here.”

Something moved outside the shuttered windows. Footsteps, slow and steady, passed by the window, heading for the door.

“Who’s out there, Diana?” said Carrion.

“My mother. She was here too.”

All the color drained from Silence’s face as a cold hand clutched at his heart. “No, Diana. No. Your mother’s been dead five years now.”

“Not here,” said Diana. “You were here and I was here, and Mother was with us. We’re all going to be together, and we’ll never have to be alone again.”

The footsteps reached the door, and stopped. There was a feeling in the air of something final and irrevocable about to happen.

“The door’s locked,” said Carrion. “Concentrate, John. The door is locked if you believe it to be. John, listen to me. She mustn’t be allowed to complete the memory, or we could be trapped here with her.”