Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (13 page)

“It could be a plant native to
this place. Or the home planet of whoever made this place. Brought to Chigran
Callnir by Trilisks?” Imanol wondered.

“We’ll find out,” Telisa said.

Maxsym was glad to see the
other team members wondering about the plantlike thing. He did not want to go
hunting for the Trilisk just yet. The longer that took them, the happier he would
be.

Chapter
14

Cilreth had learned long ago
that when faced with a monumental task, it was well worth an investment of time
and effort to get the right tools up and going first. It sometimes felt like a
delay or a sidetrack from the goal, but on a large job, it decreased total time
to the goal.

Understanding the
Clacker
was one of those tasks.

She was able to put only about
ten hours of concentrated effort into the task every day. And her health was
suffering already. Twitch, overwork, and no exercise did not play well with
someone her age. She needed a boost. The supersedure process crept back onto
the table for her, as having a superior version of herself might get past a lot
of obstacles.

Pondering having a copy of
herself reminded her of virtual cloning. Within the most daring of companies,
which Cilreth had sometimes contracted for, the practice was called ghosting.
Superstar scientists and engineers sometimes used virtual copies of their minds
to work on problems while they were asleep or even while they went on vacation.
The virtual copies would grind away on a problem and then deposit summaries of
their work. Artificial intelligences could also be used, but that was more
typical of government process. For the UNSF, it was more about having intelligent
minions that could be ordered to do whatever the space force needed. With
bright engineers it was handier to have a copy of themselves that shared the
same background and vision.

Cilreth took a day to use the
Clacker
to scan and copy her mind. As she progressed, she wondered why she had not
tried it earlier. With the enormous amount of computing power available on the
alien ship, she could run an army of Cilreths. Doubtless there would be a great
deal of duplicated effort, but she looked forward to the report to read every
morning on her virtual discoveries. Perhaps the
Clacker
could filter out
duplicate information and compile some kind of summary for her.

“Shiny?” she transmitted.

“Within range. Listening,
waiting, receiving.”

“What are you doing?”

“Shiny seek Trilisk. Objective:
lead, direct, assist team in capture.”

“Ah, good. Any progress?”

“I got nothing.”

“What?”

“Telisa teach Shiny say: ‘I got
nothing’.”

“Oh. That’s good. You know what,
though? I like the way you speak just fine. You don’t have to use too many
Terran phrases exactly.”

“Shiny consider, evaluate,
account for Cilreth input.”

“Thanks. So, I want to ask a
favor. No, I mean, maybe a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Proceed, disclose, elucidate
objective for negotiation.”

“I’m planning to run copies of
myself on the
Clacker
. To help me work on my understanding of the ship.
Do you do that? How many should I run? How many can I run?”

There was a pause. Cilreth felt
a little judged in that silence. What did Shiny think of such a practice?

“No,” Shiny said. “One.
Seventeen million four hundred thirteen thousand nine hundred seventy nine.”

“What?”

“No,” Shiny said. “One.
Seventeen million four hundred thirteen thousand nine hundred seventy nine.”

“Oh crap.” Cilreth reviewed her
link’s cache of the conversation. First she had asked if he did that. No. Then
how many she should run. One. The other number must be her upper limit.

“You mean I should only work on
it myself, or have one copy?”

“One copy ideal. Download
state, configuration, data, run while asleep, upload memories upon awakening.
Resulting mental picture retains consistency, continuity, single-threadedness.”

“I can do all that? With
Clacker
?”

“Progress made understanding,
configuring, using Trilisk supersedure device.”

“Oh, I see. Okay. Can you help
me out with it?”

“Possible, achievable,
feasible.”

***

Magnus worked on some tweaks in
the field for his robots. The variant gravity of the habitat had revealed some
weaknesses in the programming. He half wanted to enlist Siobhan to help him
with some aspects of fixing the problem and half wanted to stick it out
himself. As it happened, Siobhan was fully absorbed in preparing to jump around
outside anyway.

The others were busy looking at
the building. The team had climbed to its outer surface to take a look
incarnate. The building had entrances on several sides, strange trap-door-like
barriers held closed by springs. Each door had four independently moving
pieces, each with its own spring, that interlocked together when the door was
closed. He half listened to their conversation as he worked.

“I’m not sure whether this
feels more like a pack-rat house or a warehouse,” Imanol said.

“It could be an antique shop.
But I think maybe a house. These aliens obviously like to keep a lot of stuff
lying around,” Telisa said.

“If it was a warehouse,
wouldn’t there be stacks of similar items? As far as I can tell, everything
here is unique,” Imanol said.

Maxsym was silent. He had been
studying the plant and then switched to searching for bugs, pets, or vermin. He
had even mentioned a desire to find live food of some kind. Magnus thought
Maxsym would fit in well with the team. He loved being here and wanted to
discover as much as he could.

Magnus checked through the
robot views surrounding them. He had twenty soldiers distributed across this
house and four others nearby. Five more soldiers had been shuttled from the
Clacker
along with supplies that might be useful given what they had found: more
chutes, smart ropes, and blood stabilizers to keep them healthy in the
atmosphere of the habitat. The scouts had started to leap from house to house,
moving out as far as a kilometer from their position. So far, none of them had
encountered any anomalous gravity fields in the wide-open spaces between
houses. Magnus was beginning to think it might be safe.

Magnus checked on what was
going on immediately outside the floating house. He caught a feed from one of
the soldier robots. Siobhan and Caden attached chutes to their backs, ready to
try jumping from house to house as the robots were doing. Arakaki oversaw their
preparations. The enthusiasm of the young ones had spread to Arakaki. The
ex-UED soldier actually smiled once or twice.

Magnus thought about the idea.
It seemed like fun, launching yourself out across the air, aiming for houses.
And if you missed, surely eventually you could retarget yourself. Especially
with the help of the Vovokan attendant spheres, which could nudge them in the
right direction. Just in case, Caden had requested compressed air cylinders from
the
Clacker
that could be used to direct them around in the zero-g sky.
So why did part of him watch them joyfully preparing and think, someone’s going
to get hurt?

Because some of us have gotten
hurt or killed.

In the end he accepted it
because he could think of no better way to move around out there. If they had
to make a rope connection every time they wanted to switch buildings, it would
take months to move through the habitat. He returned his attention to his own
body.

“Maxsym. Have you learned
anything?” Magnus asked.

Maxsym hovered near the Blackvine.
“I believe this creature is native to the habitat, or rather, the environ this
habitat was made to emulate.”

“What brings you to that
conclusion?”

“The dark surface of the
creature—call it a plant, I guess, though it has means of mobility—”

“It can move?” Magnus
interrupted.

“Yes. It has a system of fluid
sacs, like inflatable muscles, a type of hydraulic movement, that—”

“Then exercise more caution,”
Magnus said, readying his weapon. “This thing could hop on you and strangle you
dead at any moment.”

Maxsym blinked. “Uhm, yes, I
suppose you are correct,” he said. Maxsym took out his knife. “I believe this
could slice that creature’s tendrils well enough. My analysis indicates they
have good tensile strength but are not particularly armored.”

“Okay, good. Now, you were
saying about their origin?”

“Yes,” Maxsym continued. “Its
surface absorbs light at wavelengths that pass through these circular windows.
They appear to be matched to each other. I believe these windows pass light
needed by the creature, probably for an equivalent of photosynthesis.”

“Okay, definitely plant
sounding, but it can move,” Telisa said. “Looking at its tendrils, I would say
it could easily navigate around this place, and probably could stabilize itself
easily even in shifting gravity.”

“Then we should attempt
communication,” Maxsym said.

“Whoa, slow down. Just because
it is the only living thing in here—” Magnus said.

“No harm in trying,” Telisa
said. “Analyze the physiology further and come up with some theories as to
likely communication modes. Imanol and I will finish looking at these items and
see if we can link them to the Blackvine. What are its likely manipulators?”

“The small tendrils here,
they’re probably much weaker, but I think they would also be faster, more
dexterous than hands and fingers,” Maxsym said.

Magnus looked at the Blackvine
again.

No… I don’t think that created
this habitat. If it did, we’re overstepping our bounds by letting ourselves
into its house and tromping all around while it sits there as if asleep.

Still, he left Telisa to it.
But he made a note to himself to ask her in private later if she was just
humoring Maxsym, encouraging open and imaginative thought.

He stepped over to one of the
windows and looked out with his own eyes for a change. Magnus figured the
Trilisk was hiding there somewhere, ready to spring its next death trap. The
first one had been lame, almost half-hearted. Maybe it had not been the Trilisk
at all, just some equipment malfunction or misuse on their part.

“Shiny,” Magnus sent on a group
channel. “I think we’ve made ourselves mobile here. Now we just need to know
where the objective is.”

“Trilisk gone, left, fled, or
hidden, obscured, cloaked. Search continues.”

“Then we’ll search the old-fashioned
way,” Magnus said. “We haven’t lost any scouts. I’ll send them deeper into the
habitat, and we’ll start exploring more ourselves. Can we produce more scout
machines? And perhaps your attendant spheres. Anything to get us more eyes and
ears in here.”

“Agree, assent, concur.”

“I take that last part back.
Not ‘anything’. Don’t make any more copies of us, please.”

“Acknowledged.”

“How do we capture it if we do
find it?” asked Caden. “Do we need it alive?”

“Well, last we knew, it was in
a human body, so we have all sorts of tools we can use to stun or injure it,”
Telisa said. “If it has switched bodies again, then we can try what we have. If
that doesn’t work, we’ll study its new form and improvise.”

“But if the team is in danger,
take a kill shot or not?” Caden persisted.

Telisa nodded. “Yes, if we
can’t take it alive, we’ll settle for dead,” she said, looking at Arakaki.
Magnus noticed their shared look. Arakaki seemed satisfied.

I think the old Telisa would
have mentioned something about making sure they had the right Trilisk,
Magnus
thought.
She still isn’t convinced the whole race is evil. Perhaps her
idealism is cracking under the strain.

“Okay people. Let’s get moving
and find our Trilisk,” he said.

Chapter
15

Micet worked within a huge
space, surrounded by a collection of eclectic equipment. The Trilisk remained
in its Terran body. It had set up operations inside a large building near the
center of the Scheklan space habitat. Micet had sustained level-four
concentration for a long period of time, working on the new body. Nothing
resembling the design had yet taken form. Micet was still climbing a long
ladder of bootstraps necessary to create a suitable artificial host.

The Scheklan technology was
troublesome. Micet knew it would be sufficient given time. The Scheklan
were brilliant enough in their own isolated way. But merging the lifetime’s
work of a dozen different Scheklan scientists was always clumsy and annoying.
So little was really designed to work together, even though every technology
line eventually merged if one traced its ancestry back two or three hundred
years.

Micet expressed level-five
irritation at yet another failure of the pieces to function harmoniously. The
sharp ridges in the body’s maw threatened to bite off the mouth tentacle for
the thousandth time.

“I thought it eroded my
carapace just to survive the Wehhid body. This one, though, is even worse! One
mouth tentacle, and it keeps getting injured,” Micet said. Its Terran body had
not used its primitive communication apparatus. The broodmates talked using the
communicator in their space fold. It was only that repository that had saved
them back on the planet of the Wehhids. Though tiny and lacking power, the
Trilisk’s personal equipment cache, folded away in another dimension, allowed
them to move, to hide, and to speak. Though the technology there was incredibly
useful, it was not meant to stand on its own for so long. Micet’s job was to
get them something more.

Keziph heard the complaint,
being also to the fore in the insane manner of this host vessel, but was wise
enough to remain silent. The two had faced madness until agreeing to
pretend
they changed stances, even though they could not. Keziph had actually gotten
quite good at it, entering a trancelike state when it was supposed to be out of
stance. At least this way, they did not have to exist as two minds smashed
together almost to the point of merging into one.

Unbearable! No. I can do it a
while longer. Just a while longer.

Micet remade another adaptor.
There were no fewer than six different electronic transmission protocols, three
different power requirements, and three different types of storage schemes that
had to be joined at this stage. Each family pair joined together required a
different adaptor assembly.

“This is an agony I would not
soon relive,” continued Micet. “As soon as we have a new command engine, we
should destroy the Scheklan once and for all.”

Micet finished the adaptor but
was so tired that it had forgotten what it was needed for.

“What’s wrong? This body is so
weak it can’t think. How did the Terrans ever reach the stars?”

Keziph had had enough. It came
to the fore.

“You were responsible for
feeding the body this time,” Keziph grated. “The mind is too tired for me to
work.”

Micet started to express level-three
apology but noted with pleasure that it should not since it was out of stance.
A welcome chance to avoid having to grovel. Its existence had dropped to this
all-time low, gaining pleasure from such tiny victories, barely enough to keep
going. It sulked in silence and pretended to be submerged.

Keziph moved the Terran body
across the lab and took out a flat plate of food material from a Scheklan
spring-doored cabinet. The dry mouth tentacle rasped over it before the bony
structures bit in. The material was just enough to keep their vessel alive,
though it chafed and coughed with the air sacs as the nutrients were coaxed
down.

The idiocy of acquiring oxygen
through the same orifice as required for feeding. Unbelievable.

Keziph had found that the food
blocked the airway for a shorter time if the mouth tentacle pushed it down
forcefully. It was a slow, mind-numbingly boring process that seemed to take
forever. Even when done, the body took too long to respond to the nutrient
infusion.

The shared body was sick. They
had to finish soon, or it might die altogether. Keziph despised the body so
much more than ever before. Surely, here, they found themselves living in the
saddest race of creatures in the universe. No carapace, only one stance, and a
constant need for care and attention. They had almost died three threes of
times simply by forgetting the main liquid staple of its diet. The Wehhid body,
for all its oddities, had been able to go ten times longer without drinking.

Keziph accessed the space fold to
check on the status of its Scheklan robots. The mass of machines had assembled
centrally and remained fully under its control. It had been laughably easy. The
exact things that made the job difficult for Micet were what made Keziph’s task
of marshaling so easy. Scheklans, being oblivious to one another and every
other being in the universe, did not have any concept of security. Quite the
opposite—their every system was as convenient as possible. Each one was a
brilliant genius, an island unto itself, an innovator and a trailblazer. Yet
they never purposefully shared anything. If they discovered a working system
nearby, they might pirate it—or they might set to creating a brand-new one
themselves, cannibalizing parts as they went. The Scheklan society was as sad
as the Terran’s physiology.

Among Scheklans, only the
dysfunctional took notice of the others. That was perhaps a
favorable mutation, a kind of accidental change that allowed one or two of the
creatures to coordinate for their race at any given time—the Scheklan leaders,
so few and far between.

Sometimes I’m sure that we are
superior only by chance—we did not have to suffer these extreme inefficiencies.
Too bad the methane breathers did not either.

Keziph had suborned four
distinct armies of robots, constructed by four successful Scheklan. It had
selected varieties with capabilities applicable for primitive combat.

The largest machines were
armored repair machines, slightly concave, used to maintain the space habitat.
Scheklan technology and society being the sluggish mess that it was, the
machines had slowly been adapted over hundreds of years. The Scheklan had not
constructed the space habitat, they had simply moved into it. One of them had
finally discovered and utilized these machines to maintain the outer hull. The
big machines were slow and dull but made good fighters because of durability
alone. They could fuse metals, reconstruct ceramic, and fashion simple diamond
plates with high-powered tools that could be used as weapons at short range.

Another robot type was house
pushers. Specialized for moving buildings around inside the hollow habitat,
these robots could serve as warriors. They had powerful manipulator arms that could
be used to cut things, and thrusters that could also be used for fighting.

A Scheklan had created an army
of cutting machines at some point, of which dozens of machines remained. The
laser cutters had poor targeting, but if well coordinated, they could be
deadly, so Keziph had recruited as many as it could find.

The smallest machines Keziph
added were dark metal discs with several short clutcher arms, used to mark
areas and isolate them for passage of Scheklan. They had a powerful pressurized
launching system that could shoot projectiles with dangerous velocity. In sufficient
numbers they could be fatal to many races.

Laughable by almost any measure
Keziph was used to, the force could still prove deadly to those who followed
the Trilisk. It simply had to buy Micet time—the miserable, insufferable
Micet—so that they could bootstrap themselves back to livable means again. That
would mean a real body, with three stances and real means of transport,
automatic command implementation, and reintegration into the galactic whole.

Micet could not be done before the confrontation came, so Keziph had to win or
delay the enemy. It had tried to make the invaders believe the habitat was
dangerous in order to slow them down, but primitives always flung themselves
into danger after danger obliviously and let uncontrolled breeding procedures
replace the losses.

They had fallen so very, very
far and suffered for so long. Keziph remembered the beginning of its pain. It
was a fight that had left them low. Methane breathers had come into the system,
bent upon eradicating the life on the Wehhid planet that happened to share the
system with a planet they coveted in a much more distant orbit. It was always
that way with the methane breathers. Neither side needed to fight—they could
not even begin to exist on each other’s worlds. Yet each side mercilessly
hunted down the other, poisoned each other’s planets, destroyed each other’s
space habitats, and fought an endless war that had killed countless members of
each race.

Keziph hoped in all the time it
had been away, the war had been won. But it did not hold much hope.

Cayach had remained submerged.
Since planning the escape to Holoeum, the social motivator had seldom come to
the foremost stance. Micet and Keziph had their missions: there was little need
to let Cayach come forward until they neared completion.