Horizon Storms (6 page)

She frowned at him as the work of installing the Klikiss Torch continued. “I would rather be someplace else, too, but we all have to keep up the fight. We each need to follow our Guiding Star, not be distracted by other flickers of light.”

Rossia gave his jerky nod. “A true green priest sets down roots of conviction, and is not blown about like a featherseed in the breeze.”

“Pick whatever metaphor you prefer. But you know the drogues are not going to stop attacking. In all probability they’ll go back to Theroc to finish the job they started.”

“All the more reason for the green priests to go home and help protect the worldforest.”

Tasia frowned at him. “On the contrary—all the more reason to stay with the EDF and hope we kick the stuffing out of them. How can you possibly protect the trees if you’re standing beside them on a planet that’s under attack? The full-blown military has a better chance than a handful of green priests do.”

Rossia touched the potted treeling he always kept with him, reticent and deep in thought. “Perhaps. I do not intend to leave, Commander Tam-

D D

17

blyn. Many green priests have forgotten that the forest itself asked us to assist you in the struggle. We have all suffered losses in this war.” He shook his head slowly. “And we all make sacrifices.”

55DD

Though his memory core was already filled with service modules, specialized task programming, and decades’ worth of experiences, DD still had the unfortunate capacity to keep holding memory after unpleasant memory. He wished he could erase them all, but the experiences were burned irrevocably into his computer brain.

The Friendly compy had been held hostage for years by the evil Klikiss robots, and now they had taken him below the sky oceans of a hydrogue gas giant called Ptoro. The little compy endured day after day within the alien cityspheres, which were hundreds of times more immense than even the largest hydrogue warglobes.

Continuing their quiet treachery against humans, the Klikiss robots engaged in incomprehensible vibrational discussions with the liquid-crystal beings, a sophisticated and unusual form of communication that was part music, part lyrical visual pattern disruption, part something that was beyond DD’s ability to understand. It was far too complex for him.

When he’d been with the Colicos xeno-archaeology team, DD had known his place, known his duties, but the ancient robots had insisted on

“freeing” all competent computerized companions from their servitude.

With their unnecessary vendetta, the Klikiss robots meant to exterminate all humans. An alliance with the hydrogues extended their power and abilities far beyond what they could have achieved on their own.

Inside the shimmering walls of the fantastic citysphere, DD stood surrounded by unusual conglomerations of exotic geometric shapes that grew 18

in the extreme high-pressure environment. Sensor perceptions were dis-torted by the laws of physics pushed to their extremes. Entire structures were fabricated from elements that DD normally knew as gases. Quantum effects took hold. Solid materials moved unpredictably, with strange side effects.

DD wanted to depart from Ptoro and find a place where he could be safe again. When he learned about the group of desperate human captives who were held in special chambers of the citysphere, he asked Sirix for more information. The Klikiss robot pondered the question, then answered in a buzzing signal, “Disorientation and fear make for interesting responses. There is little of value to be learned from human beings, but the hydrogues do not concur with us. That is why they keep test subjects.”

DD felt sad for the helpless prisoners the hydrogues had seized over the past several years. “I would like to see these human captives, Sirix.

Would that be possible?”

“There is no purpose to your interacting with the prisoners.”

DD pondered a set of responses and selected an answer that might sway his captor. “If I observe these humans in their most unpleasant condition, full of fear and hopelessness, then I may be convinced of the failings you ascribe to their entire race.”

Sirix twitched his segmented insectlike legs and folded his hemispherical carapace back together. “An acceptable analysis. Follow me.”

The black machine led DD up and down dizzying ramps that defied gravity, until they arrived at a shimmering wall that led to an array of jewel-like pressurized chambers, like faceted soap bubbles clustered together.

Hydrogues flowed around them, incomprehensible creatures that could turn into gases or fluids, occasionally taking human shape.

Sirix emitted a series of chiming notes, his sensors and indicator lights glowing. The shimmering film wall became transparent. “You may enter.”

“Is it safe to breach the barrier? Those environment cages appear fragile.”

“Pressurized chambers protect the specimens from the hostile surroundings. The captives are safe, for now. If the hydrogues had wished to kill them, they would have done so without delay.”

Sirix sent a time signal explaining when he would return. DD stepped forward, glad for the opportunity to be away from the oppressive scrutiny D D

19

of the Klikiss robot. He pressed against the resistance of the protective wall, then passed through. As he readjusted his systems to the new environment, he felt a response akin to great relief at the sensation of being in

“normal” air pressure again.

The watery light filled with swirls of unusual colors. His body steamed and crackled as he reached equilibrium with a human-compatible environment. DD swiveled his head to observe the sixteen captives huddled in their self-contained shell of relative safety.

“Good Lord, it’s a compy!” said one of the humans, a coffee-skinned young man who wore the wrinkled uniform of an EDF soldier. Consulting his database, DD determined he was a wing commander.

“Great. Our own compies are betraying us now,” said a second prisoner, a female captive with a pinched face and a bitter expression. An ID

tag on the tattered pocket of her gray crewman’s uniform gave her last name as Telton.

“Not necessarily. Maybe he can help us get out of here! We can’t stop looking for opportunities, no matter how crazy,” said the first prisoner.

“Crazy is right.”

“I am here against my will, just as you are,” DD confessed. “The Klikiss robots wish to convert me to their cause. Thus far, they have been unsuccessful.”

“What’s going on? What do the drogues want from us?” said a third prisoner.

“Be careful not to believe anything that compy says,” grumbled the dour female captive. “Could be a trick.”

“Hey, give him a chance, Anjea,” said the black EDF officer. “We’d like you to tell us what you know, compy. I’m Robb Brindle. What’s your name, so we can have a real conversation?”

“My shortened serial number is DD. I would prefer that you call me that.”

Brindle rubbed his hands together. “A friend of mine in the EDF was always close to her compy. I’m sure we can be friends. Right?”

“I would like that, Robb Brindle.”

Brindle’s honey-brown eyes brightened. “We’re pretty out of it here, DD. Several of us have already died, and we haven’t even come close to creating a workable escape plan.”

20

“We’re stuck in the middle of a gas giant!” Anjea Telton snapped at him. “Do you expect to just walk away?”

“No,” Brindle said, frowning at the other prisoner. “But I expect some cooperation in seizing an opportunity if one presents itself. Like DD here.

Hey, pal, can you help us get out of this place?”

“I have no means by which to effect a rescue. My body was modified to withstand the pressures outside, but your organic forms could never survive any attempt to depart. I believe that these environment bubbles are the only safe places for you within a gas-giant core.”

For just a moment, Brindle’s shoulders slumped, but then he straightened himself, as if unwilling to show disappointment in front of the other prisoners. “We figured as much, but we had to ask.”

“I am sorry. If I encounter new possibilities, I will attempt to help.”

DD took another step forward. “Perhaps you could each describe how you came to be captives. I am as lacking in information as you say you are. Did the Klikiss robots seize you, or were you each taken in hydrogue attacks?”

“Damned black bug robots are worse than the drogues! They pretended to be our friends.”

“Can’t trust robots.”

“No kidding.”

“But we can trust you, DD, right?” Brindle explained how he had been captured during a diplomatic mission while descending in an environment chamber to the hydrogues. Other captives had been stolen from lifetubes in the battle of Osquivel or kidnapped in ships flying between star systems.

One, Charles Gomez, had even been snatched from the forested colony of Boone’s Crossing.

DD assessed all of the stories, seeing few common denominators. “I will ponder your situation. Perhaps I can determine a solution.”

“Why bother? We’re all dead anyway,” said sullen and distraught Gomez. “The drogues already killed five of us in their experiments. It’s only a matter of time.”

“We can’t let ourselves think like that,” Brindle said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder.

DD looked around at the human prisoners. “You have survived so far.

My master Louis Colicos always instructed me to be optimistic, while my

other master Margaret Colicos insisted that I be practical. I will try to synthesize both.”

“You do that. And we’ll try to do the same.” Brindle gave him a hopeful smile. “We appreciate whatever you can do, DD. And thanks for visiting us. It’s given me the most hope I’ve had since I got here, especially considering everybody probably thinks I’m already dead.”

DD’s time signal showed that his brief visit was nearly over and Sirix would soon be coming back for him. “Perhaps we can prove them wrong.”

65JESS TAMBLYN

Everybody probably thinks I’m dead.” Jess sat alone on the shore of a windswept alien sea, naked and clean, but not cold. He had never felt so isolated—or so . . . different—from other human beings in his life.

His skin tingled with unnatural and explosive energy, as if ready to spark and jump. The light dusting of hair on his bare chest looked normal—and completely out of place—on his altered body.

He remained alive even though his ship had been destroyed by marauding hydrogues. After the attack, Jess barely remembered falling through the clouds, striking the ocean . . . and then emerging again, reborn, bobbing with the tides as he studied the flat, gray horizon. He was naked, all his garments burned away, but unharmed. He found himself afloat with no land in sight, no food, no way to survive, and gradually came to realize that his new existence required none of those things. The wentals kept him alive, gave him energy. He could have drifted there forever.

His altered body swelled with incalculable power—abilities and thoughts and surging energies he had never imagined. Yet he was stuck in this empty place, unable to get home to the Roamer clans, to any part of 22

the human race. An eerie watery life force pulsed through him and through the ocean of this uncharted world.

The hydrogues had left him for dead—and the wentals had saved him.

That first day, while Jess had drifted, he sensed enormous swimming things beneath the currents, heavy shapes like plesiosaurs or sea serpents from a legendary Earth past. When one of the hungry monsters came up from the depths, Jess saw an immense maw, long teeth, spined tentacles reaching out—but the wentals had protected him, sending a message through the water that this man was to be left alone. And saved.

The underwater behemoth had surfaced so that Jess could cling to the knobby fins on its slippery, slimy back. The creature cruised at great speed across the water, breaking through waves, until Jess saw a low line of rocks and crashing surf. The sea monster had brought him to land. . . .

For uncounted days he had lived among the scrub brush and weeds, not needing to eat, wishing for real human companionship, though he had the ever-present wentals in his mind. For a long time, he watched shelled creatures like trilobites crawl in endless circles, climbing out of one tide pool and lowering themselves into another. The days passed with painful slowness. He stood with arms outstretched as storms passed over him in a bath of fresh raindrops. Even the lightning could not harm him.

When he’d flown his solo nebula skimmer, Jess had not bothered to shave often. He had shoulder-length, wavy brown hair. He grew a mustache and beard just thick enough to cover the cleft in his chin, trimming it every few days, but since the wentals had infused him, his hair had all stopped growing.

“I was supposed to bring the wentals to the Roamers, to help you expand and grow. And now I’m stranded here,” he spoke aloud. “We’ve been defeated before we could even start.”

Not defeated. We are stronger now than we were. The thrumming voice spoke inside his skull, the echoing presence of innumerable diverse wentals. We waited ten thousand years to reach this point. We can wait again.

At the edge of the vast, primitive ocean, Jess sat on the rough rocks watching the blue-green water foam against the reefs. All of the amazing power he now held, along with the secret return of the wentals, did him no good. “I’m not very good at waiting.”

Off on the horizon, he watched lightning-embroidered storm clouds

that hung low in the sky. He could see for immense distances, and he realized that his view wrapped all the way around the curvature of the planet itself. He drew on the combined vision of all the wental entities diffused across every kilometer of open ocean. He could sense it all.

It was glorious. If only he could share it with someone . . .

Not long ago, on the first sterile sea planet where Jess had distributed the living water beings, there had not been even the rudiments of mono-cellular life. On that world, unrestricted, the wentals had raged through the water, grasping every molecule to incorporate it into their essence like a flamefront devouring fuel, bringing a whole planet to life, lighting it up like a torch.