Authors: Marla Therron
“I agree.” The hesitancy in his voice made her wonder if for the first time he was having second thoughts about taking her as his mate.
Indeed, their worlds seemed more irreconcilable than ever.
Chapter Twelve
They crept along the ledge that wrapped behind the waterfall, each step intensifying the tingling sensation in Rae’s heart. She glanced over her shoulder, Garr’s focus on the treacherous path instead of her—though she sensed beneath it all he was brooding.
Perhaps Rae should have been happy. He was on the path toward accepting their fundamental incompatibility.
Besides, since she’d not submitted to him and was non-Ythirian, he could have an “out” and find a more traditional mate someday.
In spite of the fact all these thoughts should have made Rae feel better, none did. Garr was miserable; so was she.
The mist from the falls flecked her skin in beads of water, dampening and somewhat straightening her wavy hair. They passed through the wet into a shadowy cavern behind the falls, illuminated on three sides by what sunlight could push through curtains of bottle-green water.
The alcove was dressed in blue moss, and recessed further in was an ancient, circular door of metal with runic markings. Intuitively—no doubt from Kaython’s meddling—she could read the runes.
They said, “SECTOR 47-B ACCESS.”
“What is this?” Rae wondered.
“It can’t be,” Garr murmured. “Why would Kaython bring us here, of all places? This is one of the Skorvag’s hatching sites.”
“The Skorvag was built by people?”
“By Ythirians, so many cycles ago that time has forgotten when it first began.”
“Could Kaython want me to go in there?”
He shook his head. “Impossible. It is forbidden.”
And yet the urgency in the electric sensation at her center grew, until she felt drawn to the portal. “Maybe it’s not forbidden for humans.” She approached the door, and noticed it had been recently scraped clean of moss. What did that mean?
“I don’t like this,” Garr whispered.
She grinned over her shoulder at him. “Of course not. Because if Kaython brought a human here because I’m immune to the rules that forbid people inside the hatching site, it might also mean she never intended me to be your mate.”
She hadn’t meant to hurt him, but those words pierced Garr. The confidence in his face for the first time faltered. The words had been flippant on her part, but they took the huge alien’s knees out from under him.
Sighing, Rae slunk back to Garr and set one hand on his giant forearm. He flinched from her touch, but Rae stepped forward and instead rested her palm on his shoulder, waiting until he looked down at her.
“Hey, relax. Whatever Kaython wants, I’m sure it’s for the best.” She wasn’t absolutely sure, of course, but the words seemed right.
He shook his head, as though to dispel all doubts. “Whatever the case, you’ll stay.” Back to that soaring confidence—or perhaps a semblance of it. She’d eroded his foundations and now he was clinging hard to his fantasies.
That would have to be a conversation for another day. She turned back to the door and wondered how to open it, when she spotted a keypad with ten keys.
Their markings had long worn off, but she assumed it was from a base 10 numbering system. She tried hovering fingers over individual keys.
“What are you doing?” Garr asked.
“Waiting for Kaython to make me ticklish. If she wants me in the forbidden room, she can show me the combination.” Indeed, each time the tingle returned, she pressed the key she was on.
After punching in a four-digit combination, the circular door hissed and sucked inward two feet, then rolled to the side.
Air moved beyond the doorway. Lights flicked on and illuminated a short corridor. There was no organic plant tech; this hallway was built through traditional manufacturing, not a Skorvag.
Garr seized her arm. “Wait. There could be danger.”
“You’re not allowed to follow me. So unless Kaython’s ordering you inside, you need to let me go.” She didn’t want to play the “trust your goddess” card, so she tried another: “Trust me.”
He studied her, the entryway, and then her again. “You’re right.”
It felt nice to hear him say it. “Of course I am. I’m ridiculously smart, remember?”
“Ridiculously?”
“I should terrify you.” She reached up to stroke his square jaw. “I’ll be fine.”
He took her fingertips and kissed them. “Be careful.”
“I’ll come running back the second I find something evil in there that wants to eat me. Promise.”
Turning to face the dimly lit corridor, Rae summoned her courage and stepped through the entrance and into Ythir’s ancient history.
***
The corridor took her to a command chamber that served as an observation post at the top of a larger, underground facility. Glass panels in the floors and walls overlooked recessed laboratories, some of which had rows of canisters and equipment that were more reminiscent of manufacturing and engineering than pure science.
The command post had a dozen computer stations. Each one used a holographic projector as its display and the operating system let her switch or pan through screens with taps or simple gestures with her hands and fingers. For a smart phone user, it was fairly intuitive.
When she brought lights up on the recessed labs below, she noted how right she’d been about manufacturing. The tubes she’d seen looked like a series of mason jars of varying sizes, ranging from a foot tall to large enough to hold a city bus.
She could understand Ythirian and they were labeled as “birthing wombs.” When she cracked her first data file and saw the familiar double helix of DNA structures, Rae put it together.
“It’s a genetics lab.” Of course it was—the Skorvag was designed here. It was a facility whose central purpose was to create life-forms, particularly those that merged organic and inorganic nanotech compounds.
Rae sprinted to the cave’s mouth to relay these facts to Garr: “It’s a genetic engineering lab!” She burst from the tunnel and threw her arms happily around him, overjoyed.
He caught her by the hips, spinning her full circle before setting her down. “That is… good?”
“Good? That is my
dream
! It’s still operational. It’s got… oh my God. I could make dinosaurs!”
Truth told, wanting a pet dinosaur was sixty percent of her interest in genetics. She’d wanted one since she was six. Pausing a moment, glancing into the dim corridor, she added, “I mean, I’m not sure the DNA is on file, or if I’m allowed to make a dinosaur. But I
want
to.”
“So make a dinosaur,” Garr said with a shrug, like it was no big thing.
She gawped up at him. “Seriously?”
“Kaython led you here. If she didn’t want you to make a dinosaur, why bring you?”
“But… you’re the prime. You’re supposed to convince me that science is evil.” This was his role—science fiction always included someone to warn about the evils of tampering with the forces of nature. “What if my creations go on a rampage?”
He shrugged. “If they do, I’ll just kill them.” He slammed his fist into his palm. “Then you can try again.”
Holy shit, I think my not-quite-boyfriend just gave me a genetics lab.
She turned back toward it. “Stay here. I need to… I don’t know. Smell it again.” She sprinted back inside.
In the command chamber, she sorted through files in search of an explanation for the Skorvag. Maybe a history lesson would catch her up on why Kaython wanted her in here.
Video logs played, with ancient Ythirians on the screen. They were smaller—maybe even smaller than humans—with light-blue skin. The journals from their lab director caught Rae up while she picked through their genetic profiles, flabbergasted that they had so much DNA for Earth creatures.
Somehow, the Skorvag had monitored Earth even before the portals brought Garr to her home world. They’d been updating the genetic profiles in these labs throughout the ages, and Rae found species extending back to before the K-T extinction.
There was dinosaur DNA all right. She was giddy.
The video logs explained the purpose of the Skorvag and these genetics labs: they were constructed strategically across the whole planet following a calamitous nuclear war that expended the last of Ythir’s fissible resources.
With a radioactive dust cloud encircling the globe, there wasn’t enough sunlight for solar power and the surface was unlivable. Most life-forms had been destroyed, except those the scientists had managed to save and keep on record.
They were commissioned by the planet’s survivors to engineer a fungus capable of eating radioactive fallout while producing electrical energy, fresh food, and clean water.
They’d succeeded, but hadn’t stopped with their mandate. The scientists tried to curb the war-like impulses of the Ythirian people. One Ythirian scientist in particular—Rae hadn’t caught her name—spoke often about the “unchecked aggression” she saw from soldiers, generals, and world leaders.
Rae skipped through the videos quite a bit, but it was only when she happened to listen all the way through one log that she caught the scientist’s name.
“Signing off for Day 340, this is Dr. Sokki Lyr.”
“Lyr,” Rae breathed.
That was it. The domé weren’t artificial intelligences. They’d been imprinted from the rogue scientists who’d constructed the Skorvag. She checked the roster, and there it was: Dr. Kaython, a lead botanical engineer.
The Skorvag was constructed to nurture and protect a population decimated by war; somehow, the scientists had decided to try something much more radical. Was that why it strictly forbade males from “creating” things?
Most of the scientists who designed it did appear to be female, Rae realized. Had they blamed masculinity for the war? If so, Rae wondered why they’d chosen a weirdly patriarchal, primitive society as their solution.
Then again, how many scientists had she met who had cynical attitudes about humanity?
There were plenty of smart people who thought humankind was too far from their ancestral, primitive roots, and that civilization was under constant threat of a collapse driven by being out of touch with evolution.
Rae could see how the Skorvag had steered Ythir toward a world without war, disease, poverty—or even office jobs. They did it without breeding aggression and dominance out of society, though; instead, they sublimated it into hunting, ritualized competition for mates, and highly limited inter-tribe combat that was only occasionally lethal.
“Computer,” she said, testing its voice commands. “Show me files related to the Skorvag’s primary objectives.”
“Right away, Number Two. The Skorvag’s primary objectives are as follows. First, ensure the longevity of the Ythirian species through interplanetary seeding and collection of biodiversity from other planets.
Second, ensure the longevity and happiness of individual Ythirians through gradual biological and cultural evolution. Third, protect Ythir and native biodiversity from extra-planetary threats.”
So the Skorvag had gradually remade Ythirian society over the eons. Who knew what threats or forces had propelled it this direction?
Something about the computer’s response made Rae nervous, though. “Computer, why am I designated as ‘Number Two?’ ”
“You are the second entrant since Sector 47-B was sealed post seeding.”
“Are you counting Garr? He never came in.”
“You are the second entrant.”
“Computer, who was the first entrant?”
“Records from the last nine hundred days have been erased.”
Rae shook her head. “When were they erased?”
“One week ago.”
All Rae’s fine hairs stood on end. That was why the door had been cleared of moss. “Is Number One in the lab right now?”
“Negative.”
“Access all recent activity dated between ten days and one day ago.”
“All logs deleted.”
“Fine. Access visual logs of the lab prior to one week ago. Compare them to visual logs from one hour before my arrival. Display on screen anything that’s physically different about the lab between then and now.” Someone had broken in and covered their tracks, but she could at least see if they made any recent changes.
It only displayed one thing. Below her, in one of the growth bays, a genetic womb had been shattered.
“Enhance and display that womb on the floor right here.” She pointed to the command chamber floor and a holographic image projected there. It showed the scale of the tube, which was massive. Kneeling to the faintly flickering image, she noticed claw marks from whatever had scrabbled free. “Someone’s been building monsters,” she whispered.
The realization hit her like a bolt of lightning, and she ran back to Garr.
“What?” he asked, snapping to attention.
“That trophy from the squid monster. Do you still have it?”
“Of course.” He proffered the nine-inch talon, which he’d transformed into a knife.
Snatching it, she ran back into the lab and knelt, comparing the claw marking to the talon on Garr’s trophy knife.