Seeds of Earth (29 page)

27

CHEL

The meditation pillar for serenity had made everything so clear to him. With all eyes open and his every sense ready, Chel had looked into the pillar and the pillar had sung to him a gorgeous, interlocking river of concepts and revelations that flooded his thoughts with intrinsic truth.
Be changeless and leave the world unchanged,
the highest aspiration, the supernal truth.

And of course, if all paths lead to death it does not matter which door you take, thus when he chose the middle door it let him through without hindrance. A few steps on and he had to stop, his senses overwhelmed - the huge chamber was alive to his eyes! The glow of torches, the walls decorated with brightly coloured hangings, the pulse and pattern of energies, messages sent and received, visitors coming and going, greetings and farewells, conversations, commands and prayers. With the eyes of serenity Chel could see the changes wrought by the past: changeless he could perceive the warpwell in all its slumbering glory, its use as a journeying portal expertly operated by those ancient Uvovo.

He tried to communicate something of this to Gregori, who had then wandered past him, eyes blind to all the glory yet clearly still struck by the chamber's dimensions and the subdued undercurrents of the warpwell's mighty purpose. In Chel's eyes, the well's surface was a murkily opaque layer, a thick translucent plate covering nebulous depths. Not dead but not awake, the warpwell slept.

Chel had sat down on the stone floor to rest his limbs and allow his thoughts to drift into a true changeless state. But something was amiss, something was holding his mind back, keeping it from the soothing, joyous certainty of indivisible serenity. And whereas before, just minutes ago, every precept of the serenity path had stood pure and whole in his mind, now they seemed vague, uncertain. Troubled, he strove to reclaim that cherished state of being, to shore up its bulwarks and reaffirm its foundations . . .

Then through all these muddled thoughts he heard, clear and sharp, the impact of Gregori's first footfall upon the surface of the warpwell.

He scrambled to his feet, the serenity meditation falling away like misty tatters. The reverberations of those footsteps were like hammerblows and were being channelled downwards by the patterns in the stone. And glittering webs were shimmering in the gloom beneath the warpwell's opaque covering plate. Something, some part of the well was responding and if it was in selfdefence ...

He dashed along the walkway. Gregori was several paces out on the surface, his torch aimed at the stone as he crouched down and touched the patterning. At once, glowing tendrils spiralled downwards beneath the human while restricting veils sprang up around him: meanwhile, wider, surrounding patterns were starting to glow. The warpwell was trying to protect itself from its enemies . . . and its last enemies were the Dreamless, artificial, inorganic entities, and Gregori's boots contained artificial elements.

Gregori had just realised that something was very wrong when he collided with the pattern walls. Quickly, Chel leaped onto the wall and called to him;

'Gregori, as you value your life stay exactly where you are - don't move!'

The Human froze and looked his way. 'Chel, what's happening?'

'You are standing on an artefact built by the Great Ancients at the world's dawn. Its defences have awoken and will kill you if you don't get back over this wall now, remove your boots, your socks too. Roll up your jacket sleeves, as high as they will go, and your trouser legs.'

Wordlessly, Gregori did so and finished with his boots hanging around his neck. He grinned.

'This feels like getting ready for some obscure country dancing ritual.'

Chel stared at him - sometimes Human humour was incomprehensible, but especially so now.

'Turn to your left,' he said. 'Reach out and feel your way along the pattern walls.'

'Why am I doing this?' Gregori said as he began.

'I am guessing that replacing the dead materials of your boots with the living flesh of your feet may cause these defences to either slow down or go into abeyance.'

'But you don't know.'

'I can see ... I have seen fragments of the past .. .'

Fleeting images now to his six open eyes, scattered and fading in the rising heartbeat of an ancient, buried power.
And this is what they are here for, Kuros and the Hegemony - this is what we must defend, if it does not kill us first.

'How am I doing, Chel?'

Gregori had turned a corner and was following a long, curving wall through the patterns, but the ominous machineries were still escalating beneath him. Were the warpwell's Sentinels following some ingrained, inflexible purification ritual?

'Keep going,' Chel said, walking along to stand at the gap in the wall, staring at the patterns all around Gregori, pushing at them with his mind, trying to wrench answers from them. What was this buildup of power meant to achieve and how dangerous would it be?

Gregori was a couple of paces from the gap when another pattern wall winked into existence before him.

'Follow it to the right,' Chel said. 'The other way leads back into the pattern.' And a few moments later Greg was an arm's-length from Chel, who then stopped him from leaping the remaining distance. 'First, drop your boots behind you.'

Gregori unslung his boots from his neck, tossed them back the way he had come then grasped Chel's outstretched arm, which hauled him off the warpwell pattern.

'Now what?'

Chel heard the sudden change in the building energies and felt a strange vibrancy in his muscles, his nerves, his eyes.

'Run!'

They took off in a mad dash back to the entrance. Gregori had the longer legs and got there first, ducking along the short passage and swinging round into the cold chamber, leaning against the wall. Hard on his heels, Chel saw he had stopped and dragged him towards the stairs.

'Don't. . . stop . . .'

They made it to the top of the steps when the warpwell defences finally surged, a soundless eruption. Chel's eyes were closed but still he felt the edges of that purifying reflex - for a second at its peak he found he could stare through his eyelids and right through the rock of Giant's Shoulder, as if it was foggy glass, to see the dazzling webs of energy that were pouring out of just that small section of the warpwell pattern to scour the entire chamber. Then the ferocious radiance subsided, leaving him in the dark.

Opening just his ordinary eyes he saw Gregori crouched at the top of the stairs, eyes wide and blinking.

'Chel? Are you still there?'

'I am, friend Gregori - what can you see?'

'Hmm, a familiar-sounding blur.'

Chel laughed. 'Your sight will return to normal soon. I'm going back down to inspect the chamber - do you wish to accompany me?'

'I think I'll sit this one out... Aye, and don't do anything risky, mind. Take it from one who knows.'

'I shall not be long,' Chel said, descending the steps.

The warpwell chamber looked exactly as it had before, although he was using only his ordinary eyes. The air was as icy as before but now it had a faint mineral odour,

like stone ground down to fine dust. The incised patterns on the surface of the well seemed dull and lifeless, and of Gregori's boots there was no sign.

Not dead but not awake,
he thought, recalling the visions he had seen during the husking, the vast funnel of energies reaching out to seize the ships of the Legion and the Great Ancients alike, dragging them down into the warpwell then further down through the levels of hyperspace, through crushing, shredding strata to dark and narrow places.
Yet still potent. Will it be any use against our enemies? Will we have time to puzzle out its workings}

For a moment he was tempted to open his husking eyes and gaze upon the fleeting ghosts of the past, but instead he replaced the cloth headband, tying it at the side. No, he had to meet with Weynl and the other Listeners to seek guidance and determine if any useful knowledge survived from those far-off times.

And he would have to give an explanation of some kind to Gregori, who had appeared at the door to the meditation chamber, his torch a bright knot in the inky darkness. Chel grinned and waved, then hurried to join his friend, wondering how much he should tell him.

28

KAO CHIH

'Ah hmm, so if I may summarise,' said the droid recycler, a Voth called Yolog, as he prodded the small pile of money with a long, stained finger. 'You wish to hire me to recover your corrupted course data, so that both you and your fine mech companion may travel onwards to the outlaw anchorage of Bryag Station ... and this is all you have?'

Kao Chih smiled and spread his hands.

'Honourable artisan Yolog, at every stop in the journey that awaits us we shall make a point of mentioning you and the unequalled excellence of your work. Now if you had to buy that kind of advertising, how much would it cost? - yet here we are, offering it as part-payment for a comparatively minor data recovery job. Isn't that a good deal?'

The Voth regarded him with one large, dark and doleful eye and a stubby hexagonal lens unit that jutted from the other socket. The biograft was part of a closefitting headpiece which wrapped around the back of the skull and down around the hairy neck to join with an odd body harness. It looked brown and shiny and had beaded black tendrils running to the exoskeletal sheaths that enclosed the Voth's arms. Yolog sat in a small mobile chair whose metal framework spread out above his head, a fan of interfaced tool housings, extensors and component trays. The Voth seemed to be quadriplegic and Kao Chih would have pondered further on this had his mind not been focused on the predicament at hand.

'You are by far the most amusing Human I have ever met,' Yolog said, his expressive lips twitching into a half-smile. 'But this data recovery is not so minor - since my own processors are fully occupied recodifying droids for certain paying customers, I would have to rent time on the Tagreli hubway which would require authenticated fund transfer. I fear that I must decline your kind offer to become my publicity agent.'

Despite his growing sense of desperation, Kao Chih maintained his unflappable, business-like exterior, complete with bright smile, even when the mech Drazuma-Ha* began displaying in its nimbus a message in Mandarin characters - Told you it wouldn't work Told you it wouldn't work - Told you it wouldn't work - Told you it wouldn't. . .

'Thank you for your kind consideration, honourable Yolog,' he said. 'Perhaps you could suggest an alternative method of payment?'

'I am not ungenerous, Human Kaachi,' said the Voth. 'I would be prepared to accept payment in kind, such as any redundant or superfluous components from within your singular mech.'

Kao-Chih stared at Drazuma-Ha*, expecting a scathing response suitable to their surroundings, Yolog's spare-parts store. It was a dingy hold full of shelves crowded with defunct bots and droids, casings, effector arms, power cores, and motility subassemblies, bins full of supply connectors, servos, processor nodes, handler units, and several wall racks on which a few large industrial bots hung. Gloomy, grimy and smelling heavily of oils, it was undoubtedly a droid graveyard.

'I have no superfluous components,' Drazuma-Ha* said at last. 'The very notion is impolite.'

'I would be prepared to pay very well,' the Voth said, his flesh-and-blood eye staring hungrily at the mech for a moment before snapping back to Kao Chih. 'I will be frank with you - the likes of such a machine have not been seen in this vicinity for centuries.' He addressed Drazuma-Ha*. 'Are you not a Strigida sentient drone of the Ninth Iteration, fabricated during the final period of the Salgaic Synerge?'

'Broadly speaking, you are correct,' said the mech. 'And broadly speaking, you are also lacking in courtesy.'

Yolog gave an odd, harness-constricted shrug. 'Courtesy also has its price.' He looked back at Kao Chih. 'A great shame - Strigida parts are highly sought after.'

'Why?'

'The Salgaic Synerge was one of several promising civilisations that were obliterated by the Uncog Fecundemic, a replicating machine horde which erupted from the Qarqol deepzone over ten thousand years ago.'

Kao Chih was fascinated. 'I've never heard of this what were they like?'

'Oh, typical dumb-smart machines - they all looked the same, dark globes bristling with weapon spines, but they came in all sizes, some large enough to be considered planetoids. They rampaged coreward for hundreds of lightyears, destroying every opposing force, effacing every inhabited world in their path until they reached the Huvuun Deepzone, where they unaccountably stopped. Every Uncog, whether in planetary orbit or traversing hyperspace or engaged in battle, simply halted as if switched off then began to disassemble, entire fleets of the things turning into vast clouds of debris. Unfortunately, they had by that time wiped out the Salgaic Synerge, the Interim Qudek, and a dozen other starfaring nations . . .'

'An interesting history lesson,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'But scarcely helpful, since my components are not negotiable.'

The Voth sighed.

'Your options are limited, Human Kaachi. The only other medium of exchange that interests me would be unusual cultural artefacts. Might you possess such items?'

Kao Chih's thoughts raced, in his mind rummaging through the personal effects in his holdall back on board the
Castellan.
Unwashed clothing, hygiene flims, indoor shoes, a woollen hat, a deck of cards (missing the Prince of Veils), some pens, a notepad, pictures of his family, a couple of book tabs (mostly adventure stories written by Pyre exiles), and ...

He stopped and smiled.

'Most honourable artisan Yolog - do you like music?'

An hour and a half later, the three of them were seated in the cramped cockpit of Yolog's cargo shuttle as it flew towards the huge cluster of domes and esplanade docks that was Tagreli Openport. Positioned at the pilot console, the Voth's head was bobbing in time to the music emanating from the audiobuds he had in his long-lobed ears. Removing one of them he turned to speak.