Sanctuary (Jezebel's Ladder Book 3) (9 page)

All Yuki could think was,
Mori will
use this tragedy to take charge.
She felt horrible that her friend had lost
so much. She vowed to protect the engineer from further losses and took over as
Mercy’s shoulder to cry on.

The technician tried to motion Toby
over, but he was clueless. He just whispered, “Good one about the stick, but
you should’ve said
broomstick
.”

Once everyone made a toast and the
ceremony ended, people wandered back inside. Mercy hadn’t moved from the
collection of straps. Red asked, “Should we wait for her to recover?”

Zeiss whispered, “Honey, that’s
going to take longer than it will for the missiles to arrive—for all of us. If
we don’t move soon, the same thing is going to happen here.”

Yuki blanched at the bluntness but
couldn’t refute the statement. “How long do you need?” she asked her new
friend.

With a trembling hand, Mercy
reached up and tapped the large door closed. “Nobody else dies today.”

“Amen,” whispered Risa, and several
others seconded the motion.

After Zeiss gave her shoulder a
squeeze of encouragement, Red announced, “Sensei, we’re ready.” There was no
response.

When Sojiro suddenly slumped
against a wall control, Mercy asked, “Is someone going to help him?”

Red replied. “He’s fine, sweetie.
Sojiro’s probing the machinery mentally. It’s like Out-of-body travel but for
computers.”

Without a word, the Japanese man
rose, walked to another panel, and took another nap. He repeated this until he
found a round depression on one of the wall panels—exactly the same diameter as
the crystalline lens-control ball. When he snapped the orb into place, the golden
outer door filled with words, “Welcome to the inversion fortress. We have
taught you everything you need to know to operate this vehicle. If we were to
give you this craft, where would you go?”

Zeiss nodded to Sojiro, who brought
up the red-giant holographic map and indicated a planet with the highest human
compatibility score known. “Here.”

“This is your final test,” the wall
said. “Use our gifts to travel there and touch that planet’s surface. Do this,
and you can enter the community of souls. Do you have any questions that do not
appear in the preparations we instilled?”

“What preparations?” asked Zeiss. When
he saw the next picture, he said, “We call those the pages.”

The word ‘preparations’ in the text
melted and changed to ‘pages.’

Zeiss followed up with, “Where are the
controls we need to plot the course?”

A picture of the giant snowflake in
the middle of the control room appeared. Six figures were inserted like batteries,
with their heads at the hub and feet facing outward. Three were male and three
female. “Choose your planners with care. The rest can wait in the deep lands to
ease their journey.”

“Why do they need ease?”

“The journey may be long by your
standards. The control module will not hold you all.”

Yuki volunteered, “Rachael says half
of us could stay here long-term if we can solve the food problem.”

The life-support expert nodded. “We
can probably survive on powdered chow and scavenged biomass from the forest
until we can harvest the crops we brought along.”

Zeiss nodded. “Sensei, how do we
get to the deep lands?”

“Either land the control module on
the mountain cradle, or employ the helix to reach the bog.”

Red probed for more clues. “Um . .
. helix? Like DNA? Our skills?”

“Helix: beanstalk, ladder, ramp, or
spiral.” A picture of DNA appeared on the wall and half the strand vanished.
The helix led from the command center to the grass-covered ground of the biosphere.
“The skills in the pages enable you to complete your task.”

“What—” Red began.

Yuki raised a hand. “Mercy figured
that out while you were asleep. I’m sure she can do it.”

Zeiss nodded. He could assist Mercy
if necessary, but the work would help the engineer avoid the pain she was
facing.

“Why do we need to choose carefully?”
Zeiss asked.

“You only get one destination with
the fuel available. If you pass, we will teach you how to refuel.”

They tried to fish for more details
about the test but met with repeated, “The skills in the pages enable you to
complete your task.”

Zeiss sighed. “Any quick questions
unrelated to the test?”

Red asked, “Will you show us what
you really look like?

“No. That is not important.”

“Why hide yourself?”

“It leads to worship by and slavery
of younger races. This is forbidden. All mentors must remain hidden.”

“How many mentors are there?”

“This will not help you to pass
your test.”

“How many times have you visited Earth?”

“Until it is perfected.”

“Which is?” Red’s tone changed to
irritation. She didn’t like Zen answers.

“We don’t tell species lest they
compare or feel falsely inadequate or superior. The process can be repeated a
hundred times or work with just one visit.”

Yvette interrupted with a more
philosophical question. “Why are you doing this for us?”

“This mission is part of our next
step from ones even higher up.”

“Why?”

The wall shifted with aurora
borealis colors before answering, “Earth has transitioned from the egg stage to
tadpoles, scudding across the pond of the galaxy.”

“Actives. And you’re the frog
stage?”

“Even so.”

“What’s next? Frogs with wings?”

“You will know that adventure, too,
when it is your time.”

“What if we can’t solve the
problems?” Zeiss asked, nervously.

“Your descendents might. If they
all perish, perhaps those you left behind on the planet may use their gifts to
follow. When the last emissary dies or leaves, this gift will return to the
giver.”

“What if . . . those we left behind
set off thermonuclear weapons by the neck of the fortress?”

“This will be viewed as a rejection
of our gift. Your species will be labeled hostile. No more mentors will be
sent.”

“Will it breach the bubble?”

“This is answered by the pages we
gave you.”

“Can we see what’s going on near
the lens?” asked Sojiro.

“When the lens has been opened.”

Sojiro adjusted the crystal ball
and the bubble in the center of the ceiling filled with a 3-D image of the dark
side of the moon.
Seraph
was gone. They couldn’t see Crandall floating
in space, so at least his body had been recovered.

Zeiss looked around. “Anyone else?”

“Can we ask the magic eight ball something
if Red’s not around?” asked Yuki.

“Your test has begun. There will be
no more questions until completion. We wish you success,” the wall said before
blanking entirely.

“He’s essentially giving our race
114 hours to take our final exam,” Zeiss muttered. “Anyone else feel like this
is the dream where you show up to your math test naked?”

Red smiled and whispered, “I like
those dreams. Of course, you were my math teacher.”

Zeiss said, “Sojiro, check out the piloting interface.”

“I don’t have much energy left,
boss.”

“Take your time and don’t
overexert. You’ve done a fantastic job so far. Lou, you help him punch in the destination
planet we chose. Out of the seventeen of us, we want as many people as possible
on the ground to camp in the forest. My theory is that a campsite as far as
possible from the neck and as deep underground as they can get will give them
the best chance of survival if a nuke blows up the lens.”

“That would probably be under the
mountain,” said Red.

He nodded. “You and I will run some
numbers to see if that’s a viable shelter. First, we need to decide who stays
up here to solve this puzzle.”

“Right. We get six planners. We’ll
start with the obvious, the three of us for pilot and navigation. We’ll need
Sojiro for interfaces. Then, Park is our best theoretical man for drive
systems. Who else?”

Sojiro replied, “If Mercy can get
the helix deployed, I say we pick her. She has an innate feel for alien design
you can’t teach.”

Seeing the technician propping Mercy
up, Red said, “We can pick Yuki as an alternate. She knows her way around the
ship better than anyone and could monitor sensors for any movement from the
anti-coalition forces.”

Nodding, Zeiss said, “We’ll need
someone to guard us if the pilot interface knocks us out like decontamination
did, or if enemy robots make it through the lens like they did at the space
construction platform.”

“That guard
would
have been
Crandall,” Herk muttered. “Oleander will need to be with the ground team to
report back to you guys in an emergency. Risa and the life-support crew should be
with the campers. They’ll want me for assembling the shelters. Toby can tell us
what’s edible, but you folks will need some kind of doctor here. Yvette or Auckland?”

“Auckland is better with an
anti-robot gun, and Yvette does more hiking,” Red said, almost seamlessly. “Pratibha
will make a good manager for the colony, and Nadia can set up power for you.” Eight
people would stay in the control saucer and the other nine would descend to explore
the green bubble. “You guys see if you can extract any food from the alien
dining hall. If you can’t, leave us some powdered rations. Divide up the boxes
accordingly.” Half the team disappeared into the dining hall.

“Colony?” repeated Yuki. Everyone
else stared at her.

Red replied, “Oops. I thought that
was obvious. Our target planet is almost thirty light-years away. If we assume
a light-speed limit to this craft’s velocity and kick-ass acceleration, the
trip there will still take us over thirty years Earth time. That means we’ll
have to build a small village. Technically, the thirty years won’t
feel
that long to us due to time distortion near light speed. From a practical
standpoint, though, we don’t know how long this mission is going to take.”

“My rent’s due in a week, and I
only found someone to feed my fish through Saturday.”

“We didn’t know for certain that
everything would line up for this attempt,” Red explained, “but we didn’t want
word leaking outside the team.”

“Wait, I’ve seen the Kepler telescope
search tables. Nothing was closer than 125 light-years.”

Red looked at the others, but said
nothing.

Mercy had drifted into awareness
about the exchange. “She’s on the team now; Yuki saved my life.”

Red replied, “Careful, whatever she
hears and sees goes straight to Mori.”

Her face clouding once again, Mercy
snapped, “You’re worried about control of the company? I have news for you. If
Mori wants what’s left, there’s
nothing
we can do to stop it. In fact,
if we can’t figure out the controls on this alien monstrosity, he’s probably
the only one who can save us.”

Red’s tone grew frosty. “If that’s
the case, I’d rather stay on the artifact.”

Meekly, Yuki said, “Mori-san said
when Z ordered me to do something I should obey, even if I didn’t understand
why. He respects the commander greatly, and so do I.”

Zeiss took over the briefing. “Didn’t
you think it was strange that the density of planet discoveries went up sharply
at that distance and then
nothing
closer? The others were under security
seal. One candidate slipped out at thirteen light-years as part of a paper on
red dwarves. Jez had to hire the author and obscure the references on the web.”

“Why are red dwarves important?”

“Approximately 75 percent of the
stars in the galaxy are red dwarves. They’re cooler and more stable than other
types, meaning a full 6 percent of them have Goldilocks planets, candidates for
colonization.”

“Then why did we focus on red
giants
so much?” asked Mercy.

“Because the aliens use them for
navigating,” Zeiss replied. “There seems to be some sort of superhighway
between the giants in the subspace below Einstein’s rubber sheet.”

“More like the East Australian
Current, a turbo flow,” Red corrected.

Mercy laughed. “You’re still
quoting from
Finding Nemo
? God, how many times did you make us watch
that show when we were little? Besides, what difference does that make? The
nearest giant, Arcturus, is farther away than our target.”

“Ah, but the currents still pass
through . . .”

Yuki ignored the techno-babble and
focused her special camera on Sojiro as he slid into a narrow, gel bed under
one of the snowflake’s control helmets. As he did so, the room activated, and
almost every surface lit with some readout, dials, or buttons. Soon after she
clicked the shutter, most of the panels went dim again.

Alert, Zeiss stopped lecturing and
noted, “The ship is adapting to him, his gifts. But for a moment, we saw all
the controls.” Grabbing the camera from Yuki, he said, “I need to see that photo.”

Yuki’s face became a mask as he
fiddled with the device.

“Good resolution, but why is this
black-and-white?” he said, thumbing the menu button. “What happened to the
other picture?”

Red warned, “Don’t touch any other
buttons. She’s terrified of something.”

Mercy looked from the camera to her
new friend. “If you want to be a member of this team, I have your back, but you
have to tell us everything now. What have you done?”

Had anyone else asked, Yuki
probably would’ve lied. Instead, she answered, “I have been sending images and
short messages to Mori-san.”

“That’s impossible,” Zeiss said,
examining the camera from every angle. It was thicker than popular cameras, but
contained no transmitters that he could detect. Yet the next menu item under ‘delete’
was clearly ‘send.’

She showed him the spent cartridge.
“When you hit that button, the digital image will be transferred onto the thin
layer of quantum-paired material. Each pixel turns on or off a particle and the
image appears on its counterpart.”

“Like a Polaroid?” asked Red.

“Quantum communication,” Mercy
whispered. “I thought it was too noisy, too unpredictable.”

“For text more than about twenty etched
characters, not images,” Yuki admitted. “It has something to do with mimicking
a real waveform, not just light.”

Red looked to her husband for a
translation.

Zeiss said, “Whatever happens to
the layer here also happens to the one in Tokyo.”

The spy nodded.

“That far?” asked Red.

“Theoretically, it transmits over
any distance, although the separation and arrangement of entangled particles
would be incredibly tedious and costly,” Zeiss said. “This is a variation on my
faster-than-light speedometer.”

“Yes. We’ve transmitted from L1 and
the UN moon base to Earth with no problems.”

“Why not use radio?”

“This is undetectable and can’t be
intercepted or blocked.”

“How many more snapshots do you
have after this one?”

“Two. But I have to send that image
soon. If Sojiro moves, it will become foggy.”

Memorizing the photo, he added the
caption, ‘flying to IP173 to earn ship-Z’ and hit ‘send.’

The women watched him tensely,
wondering what he’d do with the news of Yuki’s duplicity. Finally, the Asian
woman asked, “What happens to me now?”

Zeiss breathed out. “Our charter
says everyone deserves a second chance—redemption through service. Do the job
we hired you for. We decide when to use the last two photos. If we catch you
holding anything else back, I’ll have you strapped to the bow like one of those
female statues, whatever they’re called.”

“A figurehead,” supplied Mercy.

Raising a finger toward Mercy, he
replied, “You. If anyone else had asked, I’d have labeled you both spies. I
expect you to watch her like a hawk. Now stop sulking and get me a helix.”

“Yes, Z.”

****

Mercy stared at the controls on the
wall. In her experience, she could beat her head against a problem like this
for a week before it crumbled. However, missiles were streaking toward them at
hyper-mach speed, and she wasn’t doing squat. After thirty minutes, she
complained, “This is useless.”

Yuki encouraged her. “No. You’re
making great strides. You figured out remote configuration only works when the
big door is closed.”

“I hit the only button I had, and
all it did was undo everything we made outside. I found the reset button. Whoo
hoo, I could be the pin girl in a bowling alley.”

“Pin or pinup?” asked Lou, trying
to be charming.

Mercy snorted. “What do you want?”

“Sojiro has locked in the
destination for us, but he’s wiped from the effort.”

“Can we survive a nuke?”

“Eh,” he waggled his hand. “If the
ground team travels the full two klicks away from the lens and hides under that
mountain, sure. However,
our
chances aren’t too good up here.”

“We have just enough time: we could
take apart the
Ascension
and bring it through the airlock a piece at a
time. Herk, Risa, and I could put it back together on this side.”

“Like a Volkswagen in the dean’s
office. Cool. Assuming it still works, we could fly the ship around the bubble;
it’d be really handy. Only one problem: the door from here to outside isn’t big
enough for several of the pieces.”

“
Ascension’s
shielding would
protect us from any radiation. I should at least tell the commander my idea.”

Yuki opened her mouth as if to
inject an idea, but Lou talked over her. “Red and Z are recovering from their
computational trance in one of the bedrooms.”

“Are they . . .?”

“No, just spooning.”

“What’s that?”

Lou raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

Yuki said, “We call it
sokui
.
It is where the man cradles the woman from behind to warm and reassure her.”

“Like two spoons in a drawer,”
explained Lou.

Blushing slightly, Mercy said, “We
don’t have time to discuss sexual positions. I have to solve these controls.
What do you need?”

Unaccustomed to girls rebuffing
him, Lou scratched the back of his neck. “We thought you might climb into the
snowflake next. The controls seemed to be based on each person’s specialty. I
thought you might continue your success.”

“You just want to get her on a bed,”
Yuki joked.

Mercy glanced at the cryptic
control panel and then float-bounced over to the snowflake. “Another
perspective couldn’t hurt.”

Picking an unused arm of the
central controls, she lay on the firm gel, which conformed to her shape much as
the toilet seat had. When she tapped the side of the bed, the device slid her
toward the center and upward, nestling the helmet over her head. Since she was
smaller than Sojiro, only her mouth remained uncovered by the hood. In moments,
her view went from blackness to three holograms: the lens orbit around the
moon, a wide view of the entire subspace balloon, and a close-up exterior view
of the saucer. Affecting the entire ship felt too dangerous. She decided to
start small.

Raising her hand, she pointed at
the close-up diagram. “Focus on that.” Suddenly, the saucer image filled the
helmet, and the other choices rotated behind her ears, just at the edge of her
peripheral vision. Scrunching her hands around the edges of the control module,
she said, “Make that smaller; zoom out.” She could see the object half-scale,
but the commands seemed to pull on her brain like walking with weights on her
ankles.

“You’re training the interface?”
asked the Japanese man.

“Later,” Mercy said. When she said
this, the machine interpreted it as another zoom out, and she could see the
model at one-tenth the original size. “Give me a scale.”

The interface gleeped but nothing
else happened.

Sojiro said, “You’re trying to do
something it can’t—”

Yuki shushed him.

Mercy drew a line from the
mountainward edge of the ship to the base of the umbilical. “Dimension line
here, black, hairline thickness, units in meters.”

The line appeared but no numbers.
Squeezing her fingers together around the command module, she added, “Until
calibrated, set this as twenty-five meters. Use English numbering system. Tick
marks every ten meters.”

When this happened, she counted the
distance from their module to the nearest ground point—120 meters. After
staring for a short time, she whispered, “Highlight the domino tiles floating
outside the ship.” Mercy held out her hands to the approximate dimension.
Several choices appeared, and she pointed at the one she meant. “Domino.” This
selection process happened so often, it became second nature.

The choices vanished and hundreds
of black lines covered the picture. “In sun yellow.” A spectrum of yellow appeared
at the tip of her nose and she pointed with her left finger. “That hue and
intensity, hair thickness. Show me a count of dominoes available in the lower
left corner.”