And now their new alien friend was in trouble. He had a plan, however, which reduced itself, in Zack’s mind, to several one-word steps.
“Escape” was part one. Specifically, get out of this prison cell in the Sentry Beehive annex.
“Transit” was next. Get through the Sentry habitat.
The third was “Locate,” as in find the NEO’s control center or a control center. That was followed by “Reboot.”
“Why do we need to reboot anything?” Zack had asked.
For the next fifteen minutes, Dash recounted the failures of the Keanu system over the past many cycles. “I think he means a century,” Valya had said. She had been working to convert Sentry definitions of time and measure to figures humans could use.
Zack put the question directly to Dash. “How can you tell?”
“Terminal habitat loss,” it said, which sounded terrifying in its blandness. “Random generations,” whatever that meant, though Zack suspected it had to do with resurrections and Revenants. “Equipment failures.”
That was clear enough.
It had been difficult for Zack to conceive of the technology on display in Keanu—propulsion, the creation of environments, access to an entirely unknown form of universal information, the ability to manipulate that information.
The idea that it wasn’t working properly…yikes.
It added more urgency to a situation that was already quite urgent.
So, “Reboot.”
Then, the final step, which was even more disturbing. “War.”
“You mean, armed conflict?” Zack said, not really sure the term had been correct.
“The warship is infected,” Dash had said, clearly struggling with the right terms. “It must be disinfected in order to function properly.”
“Sounds more like fumigation than a war,” Zack had said to Valya. “What or who is the enemy?”
“Pillagers,” Dash said.
“Or Reivers,” Zack blurted. During their time together on Keanu, Megan—channeling the Architect—had mentioned “Reivers,” just the sort of vaguely Irish word she would have used for entities that could be pillagers or destroyers or wreckers.
Valya looked at him. “You know this term?”
He explained, then said, “Ask Dash who the Pillagers or Reivers are.”
“The Builders’ enemy,” was all Dash would say.
“Okay, I think that’s the best we can hope for,” Zack told Valya. “Is it my imagination, or is everything really slow with Dash?”
“I would imagine that translation at this level—even for human languages it requires tremendous bandwidth—creates a lag.”
“Sure,” Zack said, “if we were using our level of technology.” He nodded at Dash. “These people are centuries or millennia beyond us. And it’s not just speech. It’s everything. Movements, too.”
Makali had been busy fiddling with the black box from Brahma. Now she said, “It’s the problem of scale, one of the things we investigate in exobiology. Muscle response times and even the transmission of thought in beings of different sizes.”
“As in, ‘a brontosaurus would be slow to react’?” Zack remembered a statement like that from a comic book he had read when he was thirteen.
“Something like that.”
He thought it was exactly like that, especially based on his experiences with the even larger Architect…which had been, no fooling, really slow of foot.
“If you’re going to talk about Dash rather than with him,” Valya said, suddenly assuming the role of hall monitor, “shouldn’t we let him go about his business?”
“Sorry,” Zack said. He addressed the Sentry. “How does your connate DSZ relate to the Reivers?”
“Ally,” Dash said. It rose at that point, as if fatigued by the interrogation—or just dismissing further questions.
“‘Ally’ of which party? The Reivers or us?”
But Dash returned to its pool without answering.
“I think you offended him,” Valya said.
Zack wasn’t going to debate that with Valya. He turned to Makali instead. “Not a whole lot on which to base a plan of action.”
“Actually,” Makali said, “it’s more than we’ve had since we got scooped.”
“Point taken.” He asked Valya, “When does it want to start with the war?”
“One-seventh.”
Which Zack took to mean…“soon,” or whenever Dash emerged from the pool. He was growing impatient. He needed his team to be moving, somewhere, anywhere.
Valya dozed off while Dash remained submerged. Zack lay down and got what he thought of as waking rest. His headache was still present, but he’d been dealing with physical discomfort for so long that it hardly mattered.
Dale Scott had proven he could sleep anywhere, any time; he actually snored.
Makali gave up on sleep and, unbidden, did a bit of exploring. When she returned, Dash was out of the pool, dripping wet and performing some obscure alien rituals involving the closing and opening of its outer shell, the apparent inventory of tools and other objects in its prison cell, and what seemed to be grudging responses to repeated questions from Valya. “I don’t think he wants to talk,” she said.
“It’s got to talk, or we’re not going to help. Tell it that.” He emphasized it over Valya’s growing use of he. Dash was not a human he, and Zack wanted the team to remember that.
Makali told Zack, “I can’t find a way out.”
“For Dash, maybe.” Zack had been considering this. “Remember your scale issue?” To Dash, he said, “Food and other supplies come in here, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Show me where.”
The giant Sentry didn’t have to go far; its prison cell abutted the last chamber separating the Beehive from the habitat beyond. In that chamber was a slit about a meter tall and at least that wide…two meters off the ground.
“Here’s the Mouse Door,” Makali said. It was clearly an opening of some kind. “It’s got stuff in it,” she said, tentatively probing with a screwdriver from her tool kit. To Zack, the stuff was a cross between the bubblelike material of the Membrane and the yellowish goo that filled the Beehive cells. Makali had sunk her arm into the opening up to her shoulder. “I think you can push through.”
“Any thoughts on what it might be?” he said.
“So far, all I’ve got is filling. Maybe it serves some disinfectant or sanitizing role for material coming in—or going out. Maybe it would cling to Dash or harden if it tried to escape. I’m just speculating, of course.”
Dale Scott was awake now, standing with Valya just behind Zack and Makali. “We’re half the Sentry’s size! One of us ought to be able to squeeze through there!”
Zack realized that, all things considered, he was the smallest human. Scott was bigger and heavier; Valya, bless her, shorter, but rounder.
Makali spotted him ten kilos, but barefoot, she was at least two centimeters taller.
He regarded the Mouse Door, then his clothing; he was still wearing his EVA suit undergarment, essentially a thicker pair of classic long johns, only with the added discomfort of a network of plastic tubing. He had been able to get out of it, wash himself, and at least rinse the outfit yesterday at Lake Ganges before having to re-don it. In spite of that, if he had the opportunity to shed it now…it might walk away.
And, trouble was, not be available.
Zack had trained for many uncomfortable situations in his astronaut career. EVA. Launch in a cramped Soyuz; landing in a cramped, spinning, vomit-inducing Soyuz. Microgravity toilets and showers. Winter and ocean survival training. Cold, water, vertigo—all good.
He could not face this war naked.
“Let’s try it,” he said. He knelt in front of the opening and put out his hands. As Makali had suggested, the bubbly material gave way. Zack couldn’t pull it out, but he could compress it.
“I think we’re going to have to shove you,” Scott said.
“Don’t look so happy about it,” Valya said.