And with that, it untucks its feeder arms and releases a bubble.
It takes a long moment for any of us to react. I’ve never seen a magnetic monopole bubble before. I doubt there’s a living human anywhere in the Union who has. These are the things that nearly ended us as a species. The feeling of visceral dread that seizes me when I realize what I’m seeing is impossible to convey. Even without the emotional response, though, it’s hard to look at it. I try, but my eyes can’t seem to focus. Every time I think I’ve got it, they slide away. It’s small, I can tell that much—a twisted knot of shiny blackness that drifts up and away from the creeper like a negative image of a will-o’-the-wisp.
“Holy shit,” Nasha whispers, and takes an involuntary step back. “Is it armed?”
“Can’t be,” Cat says. “Can it, Mickey?”
I don’t answer at first. I’m racking my brain for the twenty minutes of training I had on antimatter fuel elements eleven years ago on Himmel Station. A magnetic monopole bubble is technically unstable, but in its base energy state the median time to decay is something like half a billion years. Which is to say that the bubble drifting in front of me could pop at any moment, but probably won’t anytime soon. The triggering device uses high-energy photons to raise the bubble’s energy state and speed up the process a bit.
If this bubble has been triggered, we’re all already dead.
“I think…” I begin, then have to pause to moisten my suddenly bone-dry mouth. “I think it’s not armed. I mean, it can’t be. The triggering device would have armed every bubble in the pack, and I don’t think the fuse was set to more than a minute or two.”
The bubble drifts higher, then catches a breeze and floats off along the cliff face. Another thirty seconds, and it’s gone.
“You appear to be frightened,” the creeper says. “This is what you came here to retrieve, is it not?”
“That thing,” I say. “Have you removed more of them from the device?”
“No,” it says. “We took great care to extract only one. We were interested to see your reaction. Having seen it now, we must consider.”
As it turns to go, Jamie says, “Hey. We need water.”
Good man. I can’t believe he had the presence of mind to think of that. The creeper pauses. “Water?”
“Yeah,” he says. “If you want us to still be here when you come back, you need to give us water.”
It hesitates, and a ripple runs the length of its body before it continues on. “Acceptable,” it says, then disappears back into the labyrinth.
THE CREEPER IS as good as its word. A half hour or so after Jamie’s request, a crowd of the smaller ones emerges from the opening. Each one holds a hollow stone half-sphere filled with water in its feeding arms. They set them down one by one on the ground outside the entrance, then disappear back into the darkness.
<RedHawk>: Hey.
<RedHawk>: Want to send me up a drink?
<RedHawk>: I’m kind of dying up here.
<RedHawk>: By which I mean I’m literally dying up here.
<RedHawk>: Mickey?
<RedHawk>: Hello?
“He doesn’t have the bomb with him,” Nasha says when the creeper emerges again. “I’ve got a bad feeling about where this is going.” She pulls her burners out of the pile of gear we’ve been resting against, checks the charge on each of them, and then hands one to me. It’s pretty clear to me that if this comes to fighting we’re not ever leaving here, but I take it anyway. I guess it’s just not in our nature to face the unknown empty-handed.
We get to our feet as it approaches. The sun is past noon now, and the air is slowly cooling. The water they brought us earlier is mostly gone, with maybe a liter for each of us stashed in our packs. I’m hoping that not-Speaker has something definitive to say this time, because I’m really not looking forward to another night out here in the open, and Berto isn’t going to last much longer up there without water. No matter what happens with the creepers, at some point soon I need to send him home.
The creeper trundles up to me, then rises up until its mandibles are even with my head. “We have determined that you are this group’s Prime,” it says.
“No,” I say. “We’ve been over this. Our kind does not have ancillaries. We are all Prime.”
“You have said this,” it says. “We do not believe you. However, for the moment this is irrelevant. For the purposes of this negotiation, you will be this group’s Prime.”
I glance over at Nasha. She shrugs. Cat and Jamie are on their feet as well now, standing silently just behind us. Nothing to do but go with it, I guess.
“Okay,” I say. “For the purposes of this negotiation, I will accept that you believe that I am this group’s Prime. So? What now?”
“Now,” it says, “you will come with me.”
Nasha puts a hand to my arm. “No,” she says. “He won’t.”
The creeper turns its attention to her. “You are the Nasha. This unit’s memories indicate that you are the most dangerous of your kind. We find this difficult to believe.”
“I’m Nasha Adjaya,” she says. “Your memories are right, and you’re not taking Mickey.”
It rises to face her. “We disagree. Our Prime wishes to communicate with yours directly. This is necessary if you wish to have your device returned to you.”
Nasha starts to reply, but before she can, I say, “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Acceptable,” the creeper says, then turns and scuttles back toward the opening.
“Mickey,” Nasha begins, but I shake my head and start after the creeper.
“If they wanted to kill us,” I say over my shoulder, “they wouldn’t need to trick me into the labyrinth. They could just do it here.”
There’s not really an answer for that. The three of them watch in silence as I follow the creeper down.
THIS LABYRINTH ISN’T much like the one Speaker came from. The walls of the tunnels are all clean-cut and dry, and where Speaker’s tunnels meandered like a slow-moving river, this one cuts arrow-straight into the mountain. As we descend, we pass crossing tunnels every hundred meters or so, always intersecting the main branch at right angles. At every third crossing, a narrow air shaft leads up from the ceiling toward the surface. There’s even dim, gray light filtering in from somewhere.
This place looks almost like something humans would build.
After ten minutes of walking, the tunnel levels out, and then shortly after that it begins to ascend. There are narrow shafts leading down and away where the walls meet the floor at the lowest point. It’s obviously a drainage system, although I have no idea where the water is going from here.
It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t seen a single creeper other than not-Speaker.
After another ten minutes, the tunnel levels out again. We’re deep into the mountain now. How much granite is over my head? Five hundred meters? A thousand? Enough, anyway, that if the roof caves in, they’re never going to find my body. I’m contemplating that when the walls and ceiling of the tunnel fall away and I find myself walking into a chamber even bigger than the one where I first met Speaker.
Not-Speaker keeps moving, but I have to stop and stare. I’m at the edge of a half-sphere of empty space that must be a hundred meters across. The walls are as smooth-cut as the tunnels, and the space is shot through with what looks like webbing. I cringe at first, thinking of the spiders. It only takes a moment to see that’s not quite it, though. This isn’t a web. It looks more like a diagram I once saw of the networks of neurons in a rabbit’s brain. Strands of gray fiber as thick as my wrist sprout from every part of the walls and floor and ceiling, intertwining with one another in a random tangle that my eye keeps trying to sort into some sort of pattern. Where three or four strands meet in one place, nodes have formed, misshapen blobs a meter or two wide.