“Don’t be,” Joe says. “Don’t let the tech use you. Stay sharp and independent. Remember—everybody else who came down here is dead.”
“We don’t know that,” Jacobi says.
Ulyanova makes a little sigh.
We all saw the wreckage around the station. And the condition of the station itself. Did everybody just give up? Antags and humans at the same time? Before the Antags could find or confirm, or destroy, what Captain Coyle believes is at the heart of…
Watch yourself, Venn.
This time, I can almost see Coyle. She’s standing in a long hallway between rows of black columns. She’s found a relevant cache of records and is trying to communicate what she’s found to me. We’re here. This place is incredibly deep and strong. I’ve been checking out newer history. And you’re in. The library accepts you as a legitimate user.
“What history?” I ask softly.
Coyle says, Our shelly friends broke through their crust, then retreated, but centuries later, they did more than that. Much more. They sent spaceships. Some of the ships reached Titan and other moons. Others went much farther—all the way to the Kuiper belt, even the Oort cloud. Huge places out there. Sun-planets!
“How long ago?”
Got to slow down. Got to rest. I’m not going to be a guide much longer. I’m becoming part of the archive. I just looked at myself—shit! All of me. My DNA, my memory, scars and breaks—everything. It’s all being preserved, fixed. No words to describe how that feels.
Then—fuzzy quiet.
“DJ!” I say.
“Yeah. They’re fading,” he murmurs. “Something else is coming.”
“We’re going to meet our makers?” Ishida asks.
“Are they still alive down here?” Jacobi asks. “Is that why we’re here?”
“Electrical strong to port,” Joe warns. “Ocean’s opaque ahead.”
In our helms, we see our cloud of minnows zipping forward from our phalanx, spreading, darting little waves of lights, and a purplish glow off to our left, signifying the superflow of salty ions that could melt our Oscar if we intersect the boundary. Like touching a giant power cable. What keeps the current from smearing out through the water? Salt gradients. There’s a fresh thermocline separating that flow and our own like an insulating blanket. Oh, we’re bathed in ions—but nothing the Oscar can’t handle. Whereas over there, in the purple, deadly potential is being shunted from the depths to the crust, and carrying curtains of debris along with it.
“Could melt through and make another vent,” Ulyanova says. Smart sister. Smart Russian sister. With a round face and a ballerina body, not that I can see any of that through the suit.
“Uh-huh,” Jacobi says. “Just keep us out of the purple.”
The Oscar hums and vibrates. I’m still trying to orient and remember what I read in the textbooks back at Madigan—trying to encourage the web cap training to fill in details—but things have changed a lot down here since our caps were programmed. There are wide gaps in our education.
Then, instead of Coyle all casual in a Karnak of black columns, I see pale brilliance. Quiet, bright silvery spaces. I close my eyes. The silvery void is infinitely dense, filled with infinitely thin lines and figures—like pressing knuckles into your eyes in a dark room. Geometric eyelid movies—only bright. I have my eyes closed and it’s still bright. Will I ever be able to sleep again?
The silver wants something. It expects something—a response. But what’s the question? It’s flowing through my mind. It’s practiced on the record of Coyle, I presume, but it still stomps around like a bull. Christ, I feel like a man about to be drawn and quartered, my hands and feet tied to snorting horses, and there’s an idiot-faced fuckhead with a hammer, about to stroke down on—
Inquire.
Not a voice. Not even a word, but immediate, coming from all around and shivering my head like a gong. I jerk up so hard in my suit that everything hurts, joints, feet, hands, neck—all the wires tugging as my muscles tense. If I don’t stop jerking I’ll be sliced into bloody pieces!
Again:
Inquire.
“Yeah! Yes. Right here. Don’t go away.” I keep my voice low, but that doesn’t stop the others from hearing. They’re busy. I have no idea what they’re thinking, what Joe or Jacobi is concluding about my little whispers in their helms. I know they can’t hear what I’m hearing. Maybe DJ can. Maybe he’s hearing the same thing.
“I’m listening. What are you? Who are you?”
Again the holographic presence, not words, not sound:
You have an ancient port of entry.
I don’t know what to say. In confusion, I open my eyes to the helm display of the saline sea, our flashing minnows, outlines of the other machines powering ahead, leveling off.
“Deep station in about thirty klicks,” Joe says. His voice sounds loud, overwhelming, but not any more real than the presence. “Something’s still there,” he adds. “It’s not putting out a beacon, and it doesn’t answer.”
We’re leveling off at three hundred meters beneath the crust. All of our sensors combine to show we’re cruising above deep canyons between long, razorback ridges…. Curving mountains running parallel, separated by a klick or less and meeting at right angles with other ridges, like the pocketing squares on a roulette wheel. There are no bottoms to those squares. Nothing the minnows or sensors can measure. The geology here is a total mystery. Is it artificial? If so, made by who or what? Made when?
After all I’ve been through, it’s still a shock to realize that what we’re seeing echoes with other parts of my understanding, what I’ve learned from Bug and Coyle—confirms that our connection is real. I’m not imagining anything. Coyle, my inner Bug, the silvery void…
If I accept that I’m not crazy, and this is why I was rescued from Madigan—why I was picked up and kept there in the first place—knowing that makes it a little easier. I swallow hard. My throat is filled with needles. DJ and I are here to make a tight, strong connection with something old and important.
The silver space fragments. Everything shivers, reassembles. Something else is here with me. Something new but familiar to my inner Bug.
Ripples form in the brightness.
Inquire.
“Yeah,” I say.
“What’s up, Vinnie?” Joe asks.
“Keep it down, sir,” DJ says. “He’s working.”
“Got it.”
Do you have a guide?
“Maybe,” I say. “I can understand you, whatever you are.”
With a guide, you can learn how to access the archive, if you are a qualified user.
“I had a guide,” I say. “She turned glass on Mars. She’s been warning—she’s been telling me about you… I think.”
Eyes open. I’m twitching all over. The Oscar slides around a massive mineral growth, glowing faintly in the ocean darkness—all the other weapons report in, chiming and chitting at each other, maintaining formation but veering starboard to get around that thing that connects the ocean floor to the crust above.
Joe fans out the sensors. We can all see the result in our helm displays. I have to poke with my eyes through the silver, but I’m learning how to do that.
We’re in the middle of a mineral jungle—a deep forest of crystal pillars, each dozens of kilometers high.
“The mother lode!” DJ says.
We slowly move into the jungle. DJ begins to whistle. The tune sounds familiar, but I’ve never heard it before. Still, it brings on an oddly familiar mental state of congruence and connection. The brightness is becoming tangible. I can feel it wrapping my skin, flooding my mind. It’s bright and silvery, and while I can feel it, so far it conveys no information, no meaning other than its own strength and reality.