The Caverns of Mare Cetus (55 page)

   "What if it doesn't go into a gas?" asked Trent.

   "Are you saying there's another form of matter we don't know about?" asked Arielle, looking perplexed.

   Renata yawned. "But you guys said earlier there's some connection between the marequakes and the crazy behaviors down here. Could the quakes be shaking this stuff up and turning it into a gas?"

   "Now that would be just weird," said Arielle as she gazed at the minerals on the wall. She put up her index finger. "Hold on. Let me check something out." She pointed her Vimap at the opposite wall, an orange laser beam shooting out of it. She ran the beam across several of the mineral patches, then looked at the Vimap's screen. "I've just run a laser test to estimate crystal size. It's an older, basic test, and it's not always reliable, so I don't use it very often." She watched the screen for a moment, waiting for the results. "Good God! This stuff is cryptocrystalline! There are billions of crystals in just a tiny patch up there. It doesn't need to sublimate to move around the caves—it can just float in the air—like asbestos fibers. It's probably all around us right now. It's so tiny it can easily get into our bodies through the pores in our skin. It's probably all over everything, even our food."

   Renata and Richelle immediately spit out what they had in their mouths. They anxiously grabbed canteens, filling their mouths and spitting on the ground several times more.

   Renata wiped her mouth on her sleeve, then stared at her sleeve with suspicion. "If it isn't going into a gas, is it possible the quakes are causing that stuff to get airborne by shaking it apart or something?"

   "Before I answer that, let me try one more thing." Arielle walked up to the opposite wall and pressed the end of the Vimap against it, right next to one of the mineral patches. "Sometimes we use this program to test for material consolidation and cohesive properties." A pulsating low hum began emanating from the Vimap. As the noise grew in strength, Arielle's eyes became fixed on the mineral patch.

   The others gathered around her.

   "Quake in a can we call it." The noise was now trailing up and down through different harmonics.

Suddenly the mineral patch vanished; everyone gasped.

   Startled, Arielle pulled the Vimap away from the wall and stopped the program. She stared at the wall, incredulity in her eyes. "Oh, wow. I didn't expect that. It was like it instantly disintegrated."

   "Neurasilica!" exclaimed Trent, causing the others to look at him. "That's it! That's the answer!"

   "What answer?" asked Renata. "What's neurasilica have to do with this?"

   He gave her a wide smile. "It comes back to what you said to me earlier—your quip about finding the robotics expert."

   "I'm sorry. I was just trying to be cute. I didn't mean to offend you."

   He shook his head. "No. No. You didn't. But I finally found that guy. It just took our brilliant geologist to show me where he was."

   "Shouldn't that be brilliant—and beautiful?" asked Arielle. She smiled at Renata and Richelle with a blatant arrogance. "No offense girls, but I have to have something over you two remarkable women."

   "Stick it up your ass," said Richelle. She whispered to Renata. "This bitch is your friend?"

   "Back to the point," said Edison in annoyance. "What about neurasilica?"

   "First," said Trent, "let's go back to what I was reading on the KDM when we went after Kalo Two.
Being centered
and the
unknown data
influx
. The KDM is a rather simple device, almost like a voltmeter. It needs to be because it measures a Kalo at its most basic level—its neurasilica flux."

   "Weren't you picking up some kind of current reading?" asked Renata.

   "I was. I thought it was coming from the Kalo, so it didn't make any sense at the time."

   "So what does—being centered—actually mean?" asked Renata.

   "It's an old term for a DENAR's rudimentary cognitive processes—processes based entirely on neurasilica. I believe now the KDM was detecting a neurasilica-like flux from that yellowish mineral as it was in the air around us."

   "Hate to burst your bubble," said Arielle, "but that stuff isn't anything like neurasilica. Neurasilica forms in red and green prismatic crystals."

   "No. It's certainly not neurasilica. But it has many neurasilica-like properties, and I think it's much more powerful than neurasilica. Maybe thousands of times. And as it infiltrates our equipment, it causes their neurasilica networks to go haywire, just like it causes us to go haywire. Because in essence—we are neurasilica."

   "Hold on," said Renata. "Take a step back, please."

   "Don't you see?" He had a giddy look on his face. "Our brilliant and beautiful, but vain geologist has just pointed us to the answer."

   Arielle frowned at him.

   "She's just showed us at least one way it gets into the air—by harmonic frequencies. But how does it get back together? If we scatter a pile of sand, it isn't going to form into a pile again on its own. So there must be some other property in that mineral allowing it to come back together as streaks and such on the walls. I think it's that same property that allows it to accumulate in our brains and in our equipment. Somehow it's attracted to neurasilica."

   Renata put up her hand, waving it back and forth. "Hold on. Our brains aren't made of neurasilica. Why do you keep saying that?"

   "But in a way they are. Neurasilica has the ability to mimic the processes of the human brain, which is why we can use it to create smart robotics. It's all in the impulses neurasilica puts out—which are almost identical to the impulses our brains put out. Something in that mineral allows it to home in on those impulses, just as it allows it to accumulate into larger masses by homing in on its own impulses— the readings I picked up on the KDM. And the KDM also saw it as— being centered—as if it had some kind of cognitive process. It's not alive, but it acts like it's alive. And when particles of that stuff lock onto our brain cells or the neurasilica networks of our machines, it causes their electrical impulses to misfire. Since it doesn't cause problems all the time, maybe it needs to reach some type of critical mass before it causes a neural network to implode. And what I said before makes perfect sense now. The more complex the brain, the more that stuff seems to affect it. Since your impulse networks…" He pointed at Richelle and Renata. "…are extremely complex, it's my guess your networks can be more easily disrupted by something fouling up the impulses in your brains."

   "Damn," added Edison, groaning. "All of our equipment has to be infected then. Even our flashlights and matches work on neurasilica. The matches have a thin coating of neurasilica over the sulfur. For a smart, never-miss light."

   "I warned you about this," said Richelle. "Now that it's locked into our brains, we're never going to get rid of that shit."

   "And since most of our equipment is neura-based," said Renata, "it can't make any sense of that stuff. Our equipment has to be overwhelmed by the tremendous neural output of that mineral." She grabbed Trent's arm. "Damn. I think you are so right about this. And that means we have to go. We have to get out of here before that TERAD gets in here."

   The others agreed. They quickly picked up their things and started forward again. After they had gone a short distance, they saw some dim lights ahead of them, quite a distance down the passage.

   "The other BEX!" exclaimed Renata.

   The group scrambled to find cover by the walls. Within a very short moment, Edison had squeezed himself between some towering gray limestone columns, and the others had positioned themselves behind some huge limestone boulders near the opposite wall.

   As the group tensely watched the lights of the rapidly approaching BEX, Arielle and Trent readied themselves to fire their guns, but Edison couldn't get the Machine Cutter to lock on to the robotic. "It's moving too fast," he kept saying again and again as he continued to adjust the aim of the rifle.

   After just a moment more, the BEX was upon them—and past them, a warm gust of air blowing across their bodies as it streaked by, not one of them getting a chance to fire. They all turned and watched as the BEX continued down the passage, a low, diminishing whine seeming to follow it.

   "I don't think it even saw us," said Trent. He wiped the sweat from his brow. "It may be headed toward the initial location the Collector reported. Let's get out of here before it decides to turn around."

   They hurried forward as they continued to nervously watch behind them for the BEX, running in short spurts when they could. After they had put a good distance between themselves and where they encountered the robotic, Trent was finally able to pick it up on his Vimap. It was already on the other side of the Great Lake.

   The group was exhausted now, utterly exhausted. Even Edison was having a hard time catching his breath. He bent over and put his hands on his sides, remaining that way for several minutes. Then he looked up. "Hey! What's that?" He pointed down the passage. There was a large dark-green object on the ground ahead of them.

   "It's the BAT," said Renata when she recognized its shape.

   Edison cautiously moved up to examine it. "Man, it looks fried. And look at all the dents. What the hell happened to this thing? It looks like it was banging itself into the walls." He stepped past the BAT, the Machine Cutter aimed ahead of him, Renata and Arielle following him about ten steps behind.

   As Edison rounded a corner, he cried out and stepped back. He raised the barrel of the Machine Cutter, holding it on something the others couldn't see. Renata and Arielle scampered toward him, and as they hugged the wall, they timidly peered around the corner.

   "Shit!" exclaimed Renata. "The TERAD!"

   Trent and Richelle came up behind them.

   "Say goodbye," said Edison. He pressed the trigger of the rifle. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. "What the hell?" He began looking at the trigger mechanism to see what was wrong.

   "Crap!" exclaimed Trent as he peered over Renata's shoulder at the TERAD. "Somehow it's compensated."

   Edison glanced at Trent. "How can it do that? You said this thing is foolproof." He pressed the trigger again with no response from the weapon.

   "Get back here," said Trent, waving Edison toward him.

   There was a sharp snapping sound, and at once two long black tentacles grabbed Edison's legs by his ankles, wrapping around them several times. As he looked down in horror, repeatedly pressing the MC's trigger, the tentacles pulled his legs forward, causing him to slam to the ground on his back, the rifle spilling from his hands.

   Arielle and Richelle screamed.

   "Why the fuck do these things have tentacles?" exclaimed Renata as she and the women began backing away from the robotic. "Who the hell designs these things?"

   Trent pulled the Iravano from his pocket and dashed to the other wall of the wide passage just as the TERAD punched forward and moved above Edison's chest.

   Though Renata had always thought the TERAD was an intimidating looking robotic, as this one hovered nearly motionless over Edison in the eerie shadows of their lights, it seemed more like a hideous three-headed monster. As its three rhombic-dodecahedral controlling modules, which sat in tandem across the top of its wide, two-meter tall pentagonal-shaped body, began slowly rotating, a deep chill caught her. She usually laughed when she heard someone describe a TERAD as a big stupid five-sided crystal with three big stupid spinning garnets for heads, but that was the farthest thing from her thoughts right now. This robotic frightened her, terrified her.

   As the TERAD's controlling modules began spinning full tilt, two more tentacles sprang out of the robotic's body and grabbed Edison's upper arms, firmly winding around them.

   Trent raised the Iravano to fire, but another tentacle shot out of the TERAD and snapped toward him, striking his hand and knocking the gun to the ground. Then another one shot out and hit him across the face with a loud crack, sending him reeling into the wall behind him. He went for the gun, but the tentacles came at him again, one knocking off his hardhat, the other grabbing him by the face and slamming his head into the wall. His eyes rolled, and he slumped to the ground.

   Arielle reached over Renata's shoulder and fired two shots from her gun, the bullets spraying off the TERAD's white and gray cerametal frame with a hail of sparks. As Arielle aimed to fire again, two thin tentacles shot out toward them, one catching Renata below her chin and instantly winding around her lower jaw. The other wrapped around Arielle's neck and immediately tightened, causing her to groan and drop the gun. She brought her hands to her neck as she began to gasp for breath.

   Richelle, who was behind the women, crouched and pressed herself against the wall, placing her hands over her face as if she was hoping it was all some horrible dream.

   Renata grabbed the tentacle and tried to pull it off her face, but it continued to wind around her head, again and again, like a boa constrictor subduing its prey. Within seconds, the tentacle had completely covered her face from below her chin to just below her nose. As her attempts to get it off her face became more frantic, it began to tighten, putting tremendous pressure on her jaw and facial bones. At once the tentacle yanked her forward into the passage. Then it pulled down on her, knocking her to her knees.

   Another thin tentacle snapped out of the TERAD's frame, looping itself around Arielle's waist. It pulled her past Renata in heavy jerks, then threw her down to the ground on her back. As Arielle continued to fight with the tentacle around her neck, the one on her waist tightened, and she let out with a horrible cry of pain. She began kicking her feet against the ground while two more tentacles slithered toward her. When they reached her, they ran up along each side of her and grabbed her hands, roughly yanking them away from her neck. Her kicking became more frantic and desperate.

   Horrified with what she was seeing, Renata began clawing at the tentacle that stretched out before her, but it tightened again, causing tremendous pain to shoot through her face. She cried out, but the tentacle had pressed itself into her mouth against her tongue, muffling her cry.