Authors: Christopher McKitterick
“
We are conducting research on an astonishing object of apparent non-natural and non-human origin. We present no threat to any sovereignty. Do not attack. We surrender.
“
Object coordinates 65.21º North Neptuneway, 27.40º West Neptuneway. Repeat.
. .” He chanted the coordinates and surrender over and over, using the various languages of EarthCo, greatly pleased that neither Pang nor President Dorei attempted to interfere. Fear crept into his mind: Perhaps they didn’t need to tell him to stop. Perhaps they were merely intercepting his suit’s transmission, killing it before the major feedback units could retransmit his words. Miru shivered.
“
I can only assume the best,” he thought aloud. “I can only act on what I have observed. I have not observed any attempt to silence me, so I must assume the taxpayer/shareholders of TritonCo support this surrender.”
“
Hello? Director Liu Miru?” a female voice asked in English. A response! So Pang and Dorei hadn’t betrayed science for the corp or for fear. Miru resisted an urge to flip on his option box to identify the speaker, but that would destroy his progress. He was almost there. . . .
“
This is Director Miru,” he answered. His feet faltered for only a moment. “Who is this?”
“
He answered!” the voice said. “My name’s Janus Librarse, EConaut, pilot of the EarthCo fighter
Bounty
. I can’t see you. What’s really going on down there?”
“
If you wish to receive raw feed, contact Vice President Jon Pang at Jiru City, cardnumber NEP.01.208.3832. Have him upload the Project Hikosen files on my clearance, Hikosen-whale-city-1.”
“
We have information that your project is a cover for a top secret NKK weapons installation,” another voice said, a sharp pitched male’s. A crackle of static crossed the line momentarily, loud then hissing away.
“
Study the data,” Miru answered. He resumed walking. “If you need more proof, land near the coordinates I’ve given. Now I must continue my work here. Please do not attack.”
“
If you’re being honest,” the male said, snidely, “why won’t you give us a three-verd? Let us see you and what you’re doing.”
“
I can’t,” Miru explained. “The object affects the human brain in . . . odd ways, and to splice or enter into systems feedback would ruin all I’ve accomplished. If you decide to visit, you’ll see for yourself. Out.”
He snapped closed the subvocalizer by squeezing a muscle in his throat, his last link out, and took another step.
The edge of an irregularity emerged from the wall ten meters ahead, just around the edge. Miru gasped, a liquid echo in his steamed helmet. He began to run in a long loping stride that the slight Tritonian gravity had made a habit. The irregularity stretched wider, a glowing brown indentation in frosty black. Soon it showed its far side, becoming an archway.
Miru stopped before it, panting, and looked inside. Nothing was visible except a featureless glow. Even the temple had vanished. What lay within? He squeezed back on the subvocal BW.
“
Pang, I’ve found it!” he said, loud enough for his suit’s backup radio to pick up. “Pilot Librarse, I’ve just discovered an entrance into the object. I wish there were a way to transmit this, but what the naked eye sees here qualitatively differs from splice imagery.
“
If you’re interested, you’ll have to visit. Please, we are on the verge of learning something great. Please do not attack. No one else has come as far as I. I fear NKK and Neptunekaisha are disinterested in pure science. If the Project dies, I fear no one will resurrect our work. This is too great a discovery to be abandoned, perhaps the greatest in human history. Please leave us alone or join the Project yourselves on my authority, but do not attack. Knowledge is so much more important than corp politics. Do you feed,
Bounty
?”
A BW flicked on in his receptor wafer, a channel hissing static like ocean waves crashing on rocks, first low-pitched and quiet, now louder, now painfully high-pitched and loud, then receding again. The pilot’s voice cut through the noise.
“
Director Miru? This is Janus Librarse. We’re having a little trouble out here, some disagreements, but I’m working hard to make sure we don’t drop anything on you. Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me. Out.” The static ended abruptly, as if the ocean of sound relayed directly into Miru’s aural nerves had dried up before the next wave fell.
He tilted his head back in the helmet, feeling the sweaty headrest push against his shaven nape, and searched the smelted universe that encircled him and the temple. The yellow had brightened noticeably, but nowhere could he identify a spacecraft. He wondered what kind of troubles that woman EConaut was facing. He wondered what she looked like. She had a fine voice, tender tone supported by strength. She understood. She seemed ruled by reason rather than the insanity of emotion, a kindred soul.
Then he turned his attention back to the archway directly before him. Should he enter? But who was he to set foot in this place?
“
I am a scientist,” he declared. “If I don’t explore, someone of lesser values will. Or perhaps no one will. Someone must explore.”
But he couldn’t take that first step. It wasn’t fear for himself; no, the twinges pricking his armpits and neck weren’t stopping him. He was a man in control of his emotions. What stopped him was concern over damaging the object in some way. He knew so little about it—nothing, really—yet how was anyone to learn without setting foot inside and—
“
Miru!” shouted a voice, barely recognizable as Pang’s. “They’ve launched something at us. Computer cannot predict impact because projectile is following randomized evasion trajectory, but I assume they’re attacking those coordinates you broadcasted to everybody. Find cover! Immediately. We’re going into the subshelters. Get as far away from the dig as you possibly can. That’s an order from your superior and only friend. You’re not much fun, but I’d hate to think of living on this cold little world without you. Impact in two minutes. Out!”
Miru stared into the brown shadows of the object’s interior. The color reminded him of the shady reef he had often explored beneath Ryukyu Floating Island on Earth, where he had grown up. Sunlight filtered down through seaweed and windows, through human waste and industrial emission. He had spent most of his time there, alone, exploring, free of the daily trauma of life shoulder-to-shoulder with adults who wouldn’t see him and youths who wouldn’t leave him alone. At first opportunity, he had signed on with the representative from TritonCo Division, which soon fully expatriated and founded the sovereign TritonCo. By then, he had already spent a thousand hours on the windy icescapes of this moon, still shoulder-to-shoulder with people in an enclosed environment, but these people were scientists, like him. They had values he could respect. Jon Pang was the only person he had ever cared about, besides his parents. He was no longer alone.
Miru took a tentative step forward. The browns seemed to move, like a living thing, as if he were staring into the throat of an animal. A ludicrous thought crossed his mind: What if this object is an organism with an elaborate method of luring prey inside? But why would it project the image of a Buddhist temple to him—how was that significant to the scientist? Perhaps it represented the unknown, the magic of youth. The best way to fool a scientist would be to present him with the mystical. Then, as he tried to understand, it could eat him.
Miru drew a breath to stabilize his emotions. Absurd.
He thought of Pang. Poor Pang, ruled by his emotions. He had never learned to shake off the pain and fear of assuming the worst in everyone around him. He couldn’t forget his part in putting down the Laborer’s Uprising. Pang had simply killed a convicted felon in self-defense, a murderer who was serving a life sentence. But Pang couldn’t accept it. Years had passed before his guilty dreams ended.
“
I’m sorry, friend,” Miru said, not realizing how difficult it was to say the word “friend.” He couldn’t remember offhand the last time he had used it. “I hope to see you soon and report my findings. I’ll be safe inside the object. If not. . .” He broke off.
“
I hope to see you soon,” he said again. “Be careful.” His voice sounded alien in his ears, softened with emotion.
“
Hello? Director Liu Miru?” Janus asked a blank splice. She had traced the laser transmission to Jiru City on Triton.
“
This is Director Miru,” a man’s thin voice said. “Who is this?”
“
He answered!” Janus said, swinging around in her seat to face Jack. She was so accustomed to having the natural pov at the sides of a splice that it didn’t bother her seeing him split in half. Jack nodded, concern on his face. No way to tell if that was genuine emotion or character work.
“
My name’s Janus Librarse,” she said, feeding it out to the Jiru City station, “EConaut, pilot of the EarthCo fighter
Bounty
. I can’t see you. What’s really going on down there?”
The quiet man simply told her how to access files about the project he was supposedly working on. She immediately flicked to a non-relay code and requested access to TritonCo’s databank. A pleasantly groomed Asian man bowed to her. His 3VRD hovered amid a field of glowing numbers.
“
Welcome to TritonCo NetAccess,” he said. “Please enter ID code and file, now.” This was clearly a computer entity, an individ assistant. She entered the Vice President’s ID and password and then requested the file on Project Hikosen. Raw data began gushing through her BW into the ship’s server, visualized as a column of neon numbers rising toward her pov from the flat landscape. The male individ disappeared.
At the corner of her perception, Janus heard Eyes ranting. Satisfied the data transfer was going smoothly, she flicked the splice off and replaced it with the forward-sensor array 3VRD.
Computer was tracking another craft in the 90-Angstrom BW. It was moving erratically, different than the last ones. Suddenly, yet another popped into her pov, bright not only in the high frequencies but now almost visible to the whole EM spectrum. She could see four tiny craft—barely larger than torpedoes—flash across the field. Janus ordered the ship’s server to track all four from current trajectories. The nearest was at five kilometers and closing.
The craft that had appeared so suddenly looped, accelerated, and instantly devoured the distance between them. In a flash that momentarily blinded Janus’ sensors, it contacted the EM scoop and exploded.
Janus simultaneously shut down visual feed and ordered the computer to record in detail every microsecond of the explosion. A shockwave shook the ship. So the enemy craft they had been fighting weren’t manned, but torpedoes of some kind. The other three would be in striking range within a minute. She set her card to alert her when they were close enough for her to fight.
“
If you’re being so honest,” Eyes said jeeringly, “why won’t you give us a three-verd? Let us sense you.”
She flicked her splice shut and rubbed her neck.
“
Stop being a ’quin, Eyes,” she snapped at him, then patched back into the Triton scientist’s line, not wasting mental effort to flick on his dead splice.
“
. . .object affects the human brain in . . . odd ways,” he was saying, “and to splice or enter into systems feedback would ruin all I’ve accomplished. If you decide to visit, you’ll see for yourself. Out.”
She imagined the work that man was doing down on Triton. An alien artifact! It touched the nerve-center of her greatest passion, a fantasy of . . . no, this was her greatest passion, materialized.
She thought about the feeble astronomy she had performed during downtime on the way out, the distant solar systems she had drifted through using the ship’s sensors as an overlay on recorded 3VRDs taken with the MEOS Mega Long Focal Length Camera in high orbit around Earth. The pure, slow beauty of the universe granted her peace, and its power granted her strength. Those distant worlds leisurely orbiting their home stars made no demands on her, made no fast moves. They were as solid as eternity—almost, yet just mortal enough to reveal that they were still alive. She had dreamed of wide open spaces on those worlds, free from men and their rough hands, free of organized religion, populated by gentle lifeforms like the fictional Benignus she had fallen in love with during her youth. And sometimes she studied 3VRDs of starbirth knots in nebulae, gliding her pov through blazing balls of matter that would one day coalesce into stars and planets, and perhaps some of those planets would breed life—
“
Status report,” Jack demanded.
She realized her astronomy program had spliced in to her pov, and quickly shut it down. She flicked over to the server’s channel she had set to study the explosion, but was still haunted with imaginings of what mysteries might lay undiscovered on Triton. This show suddenly seemed a silly game.