This is a fan translation of Invasion (Вторжение) by Mikhail Akhmanov, currently only available in Russian and, because of the author's passing in 2019, unlikely to ever be published in English. This is the first book in a six-book series called Arrivals from the Dark (Пришедшие из мрака), which also has a six-book spin-off series called Trevelyan's Mission (Миссия Тревельяна).
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Chapter 16
In near-Earth space and on Earth
They were in a tight and dark hole that stretched in both directions behind the partition of the transportation line. This hallway was narrow and low, and Litvin was walking bent over, constantly hitting his helmet on the ceiling. Below, partly buried in a recess in the floor, was an endless worm, weakly glowing with a pinkish hue. It was the only source of light; the pink line disappeared into the impenetrable darkness and vanished about twenty or thirty meters ahead. The worm, an outgrowth of the Ship's nervous system, was as thick as an elephant's trunk, and its shell shuddered and pulsed rhythmically. They had to walk next to it with care; there was just enough space to set a foot down. Yo walked with ease, like a gymnast on a balance beam, but for McNeil, each step was a problem.
"Hold on," Litvin said, tracing the lines of the web floating in his mind. "We'll come out to a crossing soon. It should be roomier there."
"I'm holding on," Abby sighed. "Never would have thought that carrying a child was so heavy."
"Easier for you," Litvin tried to cheer her up. "At least it's three months instead of nine."
"The last three months are as bad as the first six put together," McNeil muttered and sighed again.
Litvin was also moving with difficulty, still recovering from the painful shock. He would have probably died in the contact film, if not for the women. When everything had started exploding and burning in the hangar, they returned to the module, pulled Litvin out onto the deck, and Yo, under Abby's guidance, managed to stuff him back into his suit. It was easier after that: the combat suit could walk in an autonomous mode, in case of wounds or a concussion. At the transportation alcove, Litvin regained consciousness and immediately realized that hiding in the hangar was pointless; only someone blind and deaf would miss the fireworks he had caused. They got into a pod, rode it for about five hundred meters, after which he cut an opening into the wall. The first time, he'd cut it lower, now he went higher, and he turned out to be right, the whip missed the outgrowth of the brain. They exited the pod into this maze of passages, in which the Ship's nervous system was laid out or, perhaps, grown. It was their final refuge; whether it was secure or not, neither Yo nor Litvin knew. Yo did not even know about the existence of the Ship's secret tunnels, which could not be reached without a plasma cutter or another such instrument.
Litvin walked behind Yo unsteadily, counted his steps, and, listening to McNeil's sighs behind him, tried not to hurry. Sometimes his beloved fairy turned around, and, in the half-light, he saw the glint of her silver eyes and the bead glowing on her temple. Yo's tuahha had come to an end, and she no longer sought intimacy with him, but she still looked at him with tenderness, not missing a chance to touch his arm or cheek. If the Ship had programmed something into her, it was only the initial momentum, that affection that a person suddenly and unexplainably felt for another person. But the feeling that had blossomed from this seed was natural, not connected in any way to anyone's influence on Yo's mind or with the season of mating activity. Undoubtedly, the Faata were different from humans in many ways, but they were also many similarities. Probably in the main thing: their spirit was higher than physiology, their feelings were stronger than social laws. At least that was how it was for Yo.
If we get out of this thing, Litvin thought, it will be a strange married life: a month of abstinence, then a week of furious, scorching lovemaking. But, for some reason, that did not scare him. Like millions of men before him, he was beginning to understand that life had many sides and facets, and they were all beautiful.
At about the five hundred step mark, the tunnel led them out into a small chamber, where four more hallways intersected. The chamber was pentagonal, and there was a dark-brown, slowly pulsing mass bulging at the center, which connected to the worm-like outgrowths. This was one of the Ship's thought centers, controlling or monitoring something, maybe air composition, transportation network, weapons, communications, or gravity. It was possible it was all of the above within the limits of a specific area.
McNeil, holding her belly with her hands, sat down, leaning on a wall, and closed her eyes. Pulling a tube with honey out of the food container, Litvin put it in her hands, said "Eat this!" and stared at the brown substance. At this moment, the enormous brain that was the Ship was not something abstract or mysterious to him, existing only on the mental level; for the first time, he was seeing a part of the being so unlike both humans and aliens, but still possessing of a mind or something akin to it.
He turned to Yo and asked, "This thing that controls the Ship, was it always this big?"
"No. They feed and grow."
"Feed? With what?"
"I don't know exactly. Silicon, water, something else… The more abundant the meal, the faster the growth."
McNeil nodded off. Her face was pale, tired, deep bags had appeared under her eyes, strands of red hair drooped on her forehead. Her strength was at an end, Litvin saw. Then again, so was his own; after the bout of fury and the painful shock, he felt himself drained. He did not know what to do, for any development led to disgraceful captivity or death. Maybe the better option would be to return to the module and fire until he kicked the bucket… But then what would happen to Yo and McNeil?..
Ship, he called out, are we on the way to Earth?
Yes.
How long will the flight take?
Approximately two cycles. Forty-two hours using human time measurements.
Is Earth going to fight?
Doubtful. Your leaders do not wish to take risks. They prefer… the Ship stopped, looking for a term, to pay off the Faata. An agreement has already been reached.
Where will we land?
At the South Pole. In the Antarctic.
But why? There's nothing but cold and ice there…
Temperature is irrelevant. There is water. A large mass of frozen water.
The Antarctic! The Antarctic, damn it! Litvin bit his lip in desperation. That was the last blow; even leaving the Ship, they could not escape from the South Pole. They would need transportation, something like a Vulture, fast, reliable… If only he could control the module!
Yo embraced him, touched her cheek to his, and the desperation retreated. Her aroma was like a gulp of a healing balm.
"Sleep, girl, sleep," Litvin whispered.
"You forget that the Faata don't sleep." Her breath tickled his ear. "This is an Earth custom. We restore our strength in t'hami."
He smiled.
"If there is no t'hami, you will probably remember sleep."
"No, I will not. I don't want to! Sleep is a lost life, and it is already short, far too short."
"But I can't go without sleep," Litvin said. "What will you do at those times?"
Yo's warm lips touched his neck.
"Look at you… think about you… wait…"
Litvin's eyelids came together.
Ship, he called, drifting off into sleep, Ship…
I listen.
You mentioned an agreement with humans. Will the Faata comply with it?
The answer was silence and the feeling of bitterness, as if the Ship was weeping for the entire human race, doomed to perdition. Vague images appeared before Litvin: he saw human cruisers, orbital docks, observatories, and stations turning to dust, cities in flames, human throngs rushing among the remains of the burned-down buildings, the blossoming of a crimson fountain over the Lunar Base, the collapse of the familiar world. Faata battle modules hovered in the sky, spitting out jets of flame, ruins covered in smoke, and endless columns of slaves, walking on the ash-covered ground like a march of ants whose hill had burned down. And he himself, Pavel Litvin, walked in one of those columns, bent over from the burden of sorrow. T'ho, of limited sentience, who had missed his chance…
They sat in the pentagonal chamber for over a day, eating their meager supply of the military rations and barely talking. McNeil spent most of the time in a slumber, either because of a residual effect of the sleeping gas, or because she feared the changes that had happened to her and did not wish to either think of them or return to reality. Yo was also not in her best shape; her face had become haggard, her eyes had dimmed, and she now looked like a fairy whose magical powers had been taken away by some evil sorcery. Maybe she understood the hopelessness of their situation better than Litvin: either they would die in this narrow compartment, or, pushed by thirst and hunger, would exit their sanctuary with the same lethal result. Yo appeared to be afraid of death. Humans doomed to die were consoled and supported by their memories, sorting through the pearls of victories and fortunes, gusts of passion and childish joy, making it easier to accept the inevitable. Yo had nothing to remember, except for love, as brief as a wave of her eyelashes.
Trying to distract himself, Litvin monitored space via the Ship's external sensors. The alien starship was moving with great speed, and the Sun grew by the hour, turning from a yellow tennis ball to a blinding golden sphere that was the center of the universe. A familiar sight for an astronaut, to whom the Sun appeared in its many and varied forms: from a terrifying shaggy luminary of Mercury to a humble altar lamp hanging over the Asteroid Belt. A star shone to the right of the Sun, the brightest one in the celestial sphere, splitting into two a day later, and that was also familiar: the moment when Earth and Luna moved apart was visible to the naked eye. Gradually, the larger of the stars began to fill with blue, acquire volume and shape; then, on the disk of Earth, clouds started to move, oceans began to gleam, and the line of the terminator separated night from day.
"We're arriving," Litvin said. "Hold on tight, girls."
But that was unnecessary. The ship was shedding speed, orbiting the planet loop after loop, but the gravity didn't change, and Litvin, like before, did not feel the force of inertia. Apparently, maneuvers in near-Earth space and the compensation of gravity tension were not simple tasks: the white bulge at the center of the compartment rhythmically shook and vibrated, and the same activity was felt in other nodes of the nervous system. At one point, the images appearing before Litvin mixed together, overlaying one another; through the cloud veil and the ice-covered continent, a gloomy cavity with an observation sphere shone through, along with the figures of pilots in dimly lit alcoves, Yata with his three assistants. Then, obeying his will, the control room disappeared, and Litvin saw the Ship's stern descend into the gray clouds. An ocean flashed by blow, then the edge of pack ice appeared, along with spiked ridges and an endless white field. The starship was coming in to land on a wide arc from the Weddell Sea and Queen Maud Land, moving southeast towards the pole.
One could not call this a landing, it was more like a phenomenon of cosmic proportions: an artificial asteroid, spraying flocks of clouds and generating vortices, slowly, smoothly, lowered itself onto the landmass. The top of the gigantic cylinder was still above the clouds, when the base touched the ice, which immediately began to boil. The heated hull sank into its cold embrace, melting the path to the rocky bottom under the eternal glacier; it went down hundreds of meters, but was still towering over the clouds. Monstrous fountains of steam soared up into the air, the hurricane began to storm with renewed vigor, and then something unprecedented happened, when rain spilled over the icy continent. It was a torrent, flowing from the sky and transforming into a snowstorm that reached all the shores of the continent; the wind cracked the ice fields, threw ice mountains into the sea, sent ocean waves in all directions, to Tierra del Fuego and the Cape of Good Hope, to Tasmania and New Zealand, to Australia and Madagascar.
But Litvin did not see that. In front of him, clouding his inner sight, hot steam clouded, and it seemed to him that he was on Venus once again, flying as a leaf, carried by a storm, submitting to the wind rather than fighting it. Suddenly, the Ship shuddered, something dashed away from its surface, and the image became clearer.
"Are we on solid ground?" Litvin asked.
"Not yet," the fleshless voice answered. "A module was released, and the landing is being monitored through its cameras in the shortwave band."
The module circled under the cloud veil, next to the Ship. Its hull was still sinking into the shell gripping the landmass; a giant bulwark grew around the enormous cylinder, made of icy debris, moving and crawling on top of one another, like a herd of huge transparent amoebae. Rain continued to fall from the sky, and the streams of water, penetrating the icy chaos and freezing in it, cemented the boulders and the debris, turning them into mountains and then into a monolith, like the wall of a volcanic crater. Cracks ran out from it, ripping the ice field, immediately being gripped by the solidifying water. The surrounding areas of the continent shuddered and moved for hundreds of kilometers, but, gradually, these convulsions were calming down, becoming weaker and less frequent. The geysers of steam, shooting out above the wall of ice, started to vanish, the downpour stopped, and now snow whirled in the twilight air, covering the area in a white doughy shroud.
The Ship stopped. Litvin looked through the module's sensors at the gigantic tower, which went down into the ice for two kilometers, up to the lower toroidal ring. Its top was hidden by the low-hanging clouds, but it still appeared enormous, like an iron spindle piercing the planet from pole to pole, a mythical axis, around which, from night to day and day to night, the Earth spheroid revolved. There were no rocks or mountain ranges here, only the white Antarctic plain, and no detail of the scenery could compare to this grandiose structure. The bulwark at its foot looked like a tiny wall made by some kids who wanted to play ice castles.
"What do you see?" McNeil asked.
"We have landed. This… this looks like an ice carapace being struck by a sledgehammer." Litvin wiped his forehead. "We're sticking out of the plain like a nail out of a board… this huge nail from earth to the sky… Below is a frozen desert, above are clouds, and between them are snow and rain. But the storm appears to be calming down."
"Do you think someone will come for us?"
"For us? Unlikely, Abby. We need to find a way out ourselves."
"We do, sir." She stroked her belly. "We definitely need to get out. Let there be something left of Richard… his child…"
His child! Litvin's heard clenched painfully, but he said in a brisk voice, "We'll wait. We're not in space anymore. An opportunity might present itself."
They waited for nearly eight hours. The hurricane stopped, but the snowfall grew denser; millions of tons of water, vaporized during the landing, fell from the sky in unending torrents. The wall of ice below was shrinking; apparently, there were hatches open that consumed the ice. Once, the floor shuddered under their feet, and a row of modules, lifting off from the outer surface of the Ship, flew up swiftly into the clouds. There seemed to be at least a hundred of them to Litvin; the dark angular vessels soared up with an amazing speed, like bullets fired from a machinegun. A scouting mission, the Ship explained. Their rapid take-off and the flickering of the snow were the only movements over the dead white surface of the continent. No human machines appeared, either combat or transport, but it was obvious that the Ship was being monitored from orbital stations.
Litvin's eyes were growing heavy, when a breath of cold came through the pentagonal chamber. This seemed incredible; the Ship maintained a uniform temperature in all its compartments, and the air was motionless, like a warm windless day somewhere in the steppes of Kazakhstan. The sleep that almost gripped Litvin leapt away like a scared sparrow; he sat up, his eyes wide, staring at the brown substance, a part of the quasi-mind. But it did not appear to be the source of the alarm, continuing the pulse steadily, as if resting after the effort of the landing.
The air next to it seemed to explode. McNeil and Yo yelped in surprise. Litvin, clenching his fingers, threw out the cutting strand; for a moment, he thought he saw an olk's enormous figure in the middle of the chamber. But it was not an olk but, without a doubt, a human from Earth. Fairly tall and thin, with unkempt blond hair, gray eyes, a long nose, and narrow lips. A typical German or Scandinavian in his forties, dressed for summer, wearing gray slacks and a t-shirt with the portrait of a vaguely familiar bearded man; possibly Vasco Lowe, a showman and guitarist. This guy was just as inappropriate here, aboard an alien ship, as a picture of a porn star in an astrophysical journal.
Litvin's jaw dropped. He got up, the joints of his combat suit clanging, put himself in front of the women and raised the whip, as if about to make the sign of the cross.
"What the hell!.." McNeil muttered behind him.
"Put the weapon away, officer," the stranger spoke in English. His voice was sharp, raspy, and his lips moved as if they were about to form a malicious grin. "If I'm not mistaken, you are an officer from the destroyed Lark".
Litvin nodded automatically.
"Lieutenant Commander Litvin, Marine Corps. With me is Lieutenant McNeil, and…" He turned to Yo, shuddered and fell silent, amazed by her facial expression. She was looking at the strange guest like at a demon from hell.
"A Faata woman. My compliments, Lieutenant Commander. I see you haven't been wasting any time." The stranger tapped his forehead with bent fingers. "And now take off the kaff, and from her as well. We don't need unwanted witnesses."
"Who are you? How did you get here?" Litvin muttered, tearing the kaff from his temple. Yo, as if mesmerized, followed suit.
"An excellent question! You want to know how I got here? Well, you human call it teleportation, but we call it a spatial puncture. The Ship moves the same way but at far greater distances. Of course, I don't fly through the stars, but here, on Earth, I don't need crutches." He finally smiled, and that grin was indeed malicious. "What else are you interested in, Lieutenant Commander? My name? I can offer several of them for you to choose. Here's Gunther Voss, the leading reporter of the CosmoSpiegel magazine, and here's Liu Chang, a Chinese astronomer of the Kepler Observatory…"
His body suddenly shriveled, like a deflated balloon. The metamorphosis was instantaneous and too fast for the eye to see; instead of the thin blond European, Litvin saw a just-as-thin short Chinaman with dark hair and black eyes. The t-shirt with Vasco Lowe's bearded mug hung off of his shoulders like on a rack, his pants slid down to his thighs. The Chinese man pulled up the pants and seemed to jump up, once again changing; he was now a tall black man with plump lips and a dazzling smile. Brushing his brown cheeks and chin with an elegant gesture, the African spoke.
"And this is Umkhonto Tlume, a diplomat and temporary member of the Security Council from the Zulu Territory. A very intelligent and educated fellow! With a Master's in Political Science from Princeton, a Ph.D. in International Law from Oxford, Yale… Well, that's beside the point; ten academic degrees won't turn a black skin white. But I can! I can!" Waving his arms, he turned into a broad-shouldered muscular guy with a rosy-cheeked face. "Roy Bunch, special assignment officer, USF Singapore base! And once again, old chap Gunther…"
A strange raspy sound came out of Yo's throat. Pale as marble, she back to the wall, stretching out her hands with her palms connected; her lips quivered, her pupils dissolved in the silver eyes.
"Daskin," she whispered, "Daskin… k'taya ronero limra ain… tza desizi, tza derati, tza demuro… airigo pa, Daskin, airigo out…"
The one calling himself Gunther Voss smiled crookedly.
"Airigo pa, Daskin… Not a Daskin, dear lady, not in the least, and you cannot drive me out with these First Phase curses! Had I been a Daskin, I would've turned you all to dust near Jupiter, both you and those Silmarri, the stupid worms! But I am merely a member of a race of small-time magicians, their emissary on Earth, an almost casual observer… We're nothing compared to them! But we can do a few things."
"Shit," McNeil muttered, "shit, shit! Yo, calm down… sit next to me… sit, I tell you! He won't harm us."
A chart of the living galaxy, in all multicolored beauty, floated up from Litvin's memory, which whispered in the Ship's disembodied voice, You are not of interest to anyone until you become a threat… Although, it is not out of the question that there are observers in your system… The region of the gas giant was patrolled by the Silmarri…
And here was the observer, Litvin thought. Not a Faata, not a Silmarri, but someone else, completely alien. Maybe a Llyano?.. But this issue was not the most urgent one. This incredible being, changing appearances as easily as gloves, capable of transporting anywhere on Earth, had appeared here with a specific goal in mind. What goal? It wasn't difficult to guess, as it did not much care for the Faata and the Silmarri, the stupid worms.
Hope lit up in Litvin's soul. Trying not to give away or spill it, he put his hands on the belt of the combat suit and said quietly, "I greet Emissary Gunther Voss. I assume you have an offer?"
"I most definitely do." Voss glanced at the brown mound that continued to shudder rhythmically at the center of the chamber and clarified. "How could I not?! You, Lieutenant Commander, turned out to be at the right place and the right time, and people like that can expect the most flattering offers. However…" He shifted his gaze to McNeil and Yo, who was holding on to her. "I would not want to burden these two lovely ladies with my presence. Unlike the Faata, I do not use psychic influence technology and am unable to put them to sleep or block their auditory receptors. Perhaps we should take a walk?" Voss nodded in the direction of one of the hallways.
Without a word, Litvin headed into it. The passage was wider than the burrow that had brought them to this chamber, and the nerve outgrowth in the floor turned out to be far wider, not an elephant's trunk, more like its leg. The contractions of the pinkish substance produced dim flashes of light, which were sufficient to be able to see the hallway for twenty meters in either direction, beyond which was a gloom stitched through with the nerve's pink string. Moving next to it, Litvin felt a familiar vibration twice; apparently, new modules were launching from the Ship's surface.
"This is far enough," Voss voice came from behind him. "No one will bother us here."
"Are you talking about Yo?" Litvin said, turning around.
"No. Just a figure of speech commonly used by journalists. When you're receiving information, there is no need for a third person."
"And when giving?"
"No need for anyone except the addressee."
Voss brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. Light glared off his face, and it seemed so ordinary, so Earthly, that Litvin had a momentary doubt that everything that was happening was real. They, a human and something that was only pretending to be human, stood in a narrow hallway above a nerve ganglion of a creature of a completely alien nature, an artificial brain that lived in a starship. They were as alien to one another as stars from opposite corners of the galaxy, but they were doing something completely human: planning a murder.
"I will transport a device here," Voss said. "Don't interfere and don't get close to the device until I explain. It's very dangerous."
"A weapon?"
"Something like that."
He stretched out and froze. Another breath of cold, a silent explosion shook the air, and something appeared five paces from Litvin, something gleaming, rounded, like a big pumpkin. The object shone with a bluish hue and was, obviously, massive, but there did not appear to be anything threatening about it. A long hose ending in a needle came down from the top.
Litvin took out the kaff bead, tossed it up in his palm.
"Is this your work too, emissary? You sent me this? Transported it, like this thing?"
"Naturally. You could have gotten more use out of it," Voss grunted, not looking away from the device. Suddenly, it started to hum, quietly and rhythmically, as if a swarm of bees was spinning inside it.
Litvin pointed at it.
"If that is a weapon, you should've sent it earlier. Before they vaporized half of the Third Fleet."
"I couldn't do it earlier. My powers are not limitless, and there are mass and distance restrictions. The kaff is light, but the sigga weighs a good hundred kilos."
"Sigga?"
"Using terms you would understand, a micro-robot generator. They are kind of like tiny parasites similar to insects, quick and extremely voracious… The sigga produces and programs the first batch, and then they replicate on their own, in the environment specified in the program. They can destroy stone, metal, plastic, organics, or, as in this case, this thing." Voss kicked at the pink outgrowth with the toe of his shoe. "They have an excellent sense of smell, they only eat what they're calibrated to, and the results of their metabolism are oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and other stuff. When the food is all gone, their lives will end too, so the Antarctic is not under threat. We use these devices to eliminate waste."
"But in this case it's like a syringe full of poison, right?" Litvin asked.
"You're absolutely correct. Do you see this flexible proboscis? You need to insert it into the nerve substance and turn the ring at the base, where the proboscis is coming out of the container. That's it!"
"And after that your roaches will eat the Ship?"
"Only its brain. That quasi-mind you talked to using the kaff."
Litvin frowned. Something about this story bothered him, something caused suspicion. It all seemed far too simple and easy.
"Why not destroy everything? The brain, organics, metal, and plastic? This whole damned starship?"
"Because it is extremely valuable. You are going to get everything from it: interstellar drive, antigravs, and many other devices that you wouldn't have come up with on your own within the next century."
"Will we get the Faata too?" Litvin asked, looking at the rhythmically humming sigga. "The whole crew: the t'ho, and the fully sentient, and the women sleeping in t'hami?"
A shadow passed over the emissary's face.
"That is doubtful. I'm afraid, Lieutenant Commander, that everything alive aboard the Ship is doomed to die. I said 'you are going to get everything', but I did not mean you personally. You and Lieutenant McNeil will not even get a medal for bravery."
"So that's how it is! Why don't you want to do it yourself? Insert the needle and turn the ring? Afraid?"
"You understand correctly," Voss replied in a grumpy voice. "But I'm not human and am not required to risk my life for an alien race. A primitive, stubborn, and stupid one to boot! Unwilling to heed advice and warnings! You think I haven't tried to help? I bent over backwards, in all of my guises!" His face suddenly started to change, as if he was going through the pages of a book with the images of Liu Chang, Roy Bunch, and the others, of which there were at least a dozen. "But your government institutions are slow, your media are corrupt, your military leaders are dumb, and your business ogres think only of profit. Savagery and complete cretinism are your primary traits! Maybe I should have let the Faata deal with you… perhaps that would have been for the best… So it's not for you to reproach me! Take what I'm giving you, and act!"
"Thanks for that, at least," Litvin said humbly. "I wasn't really rebuking you, just trying to clarify the situation. For example, how will we die? Will the sigga still eat us? Your robot roaches?"
"No. They will die themselves after finishing off the brain and not touching a single molecule of carbon-based organics. But this Ship is almost alive, understand? It's controlled by the brain and the people connected to it, so I can't predict what will happen when the symbiosis is destroyed. The life support system will go offline; you will either suffocate or freeze to death… All the airlocks and means of transportation will be locked, so there won't be a way off the Ship… Or, just the opposite, the seal will break… Maybe it will activate the drives and leave the planet with acceleration that will kill everyone… Maybe it'll empty the holds of antimatter, start to transform the inner space, crushing the people with bulkheads. I don't know!"
"Looks like we won't get the Faata technology, merely its remains," Litvin spoke.
"Remains are better than nothing," Voss noted. "And much better than total enslavement."
"That is true," Litvin agreed, examining the sigga. "You have an original means of sewage disposal… So, you say, I should insert the proboscis with the needle and turn the ring?"
"Exactly."
Litvin was suddenly gripped by an unprecedented feeling of lightness. He didn't fear death, for it seemed an insignificant cost for the safety of his homeworld, even if it was populated by thick-headed and stubborn people, but it was the only world in the universe where he wanted to live. He also didn't regret that his sacrifice would remain unknown, that he would not be called a hero and no one would write songs about him; it was even fair that he would share the fate of his friends aboard the Lark and those who had fought the Faata and died bravely. He was only upset about one thing: he really didn't want Abby McNeil, her unborn child, and the lovely fairy Yo to die with him.
He turned to Voss and said, "You're right, of course: it's not your responsibility to give your life for a bunch of savages. I will do everything, emissary, and I am grateful for your help. But, if it was up to me, I would…"
"Yes?"
"I would not kill the t'ho, only the Sheaf and those who are with it. The ones like Yo carry no guilt before us… just like the Ship… It is, after all, sentient, even if only 'quasi'."
"You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," Voss spoke. "As for the Ship and its mind… You've communicated with it through a high-bandwidth interface, one could even say you were thinking in unison. Do you not understand what it is?"
"It said it values emotions," Litvin thought after a moment. "I think it can not only think but feel… Strange for a computer!"
"It's not a computer. Or, if you will, not like a computer you're used to on Earth. This mind is capable of comprehending feelings, expressing them, experiencing joy and sorrow, happiness and horror, love and hate in all their fullness. A consciousness adds depth to feelings, and if you, like the Daskins, wanted to create a device that kept your emotions, you would have had to give it self-awareness and a mind. Like a mind, for it depends on emotions, which is completely unacceptable for a truly sentient being."
Litvin raised an eyebrow.
"Really? Occasionally, even humans let their feelings overcome reason."
"And you think that humans behave intelligently at those moments? They betray and lie, succumbing to greed and fear, vent their anger on the innocent, kill and maim out of hate, give up their lives due to trampled pride or unrequited passion… Of course, it's different," Voss pointed at the outgrowth pulsing at their feet. "An artificial nervous structure capable of thinking and solving various problems, but initially meant for something else, for telepathic communication and storing of emotions. Maybe the Daskins themselves valued them greatly… Who knows? Can't ask them anymore."
Voss turned and stepped back towards the chamber.
"Wait!" Litvin called out. "Let me just turn this thing on and—"
"No, don't rush." Voss quickly grabbed his hand. "No need to hurry, Lieutenant Commander, the reaction will be instant and, as I said, unpredictable. I need to get off the Ship, and this requires a certain effort. Although, I've rested a bit while talking to you… It's possible I may be able to take one of the women with me."
That was better, much better, Litvin thought, walking through the narrow hallway. The sigga behind him hummed quietly, and it seemed that a swarm of voracious robotic insects would come out of it any second now. The sound appeared to unnerve Voss; the emissary hastened his steps.
They returned to the chamber. McNeil and Yo sat side-by-side, so close that the red hair mixed with the dark.
"The emissary dug through his arsenal and found a weapon for us," Litvin informed them. "It's already here. Something like an ecological bomb; destroys the environment, but selectively rather than completely. All I have to do is pull the string."
"So pull it," McNeil said. "I trust we won't have to suffer long?"
Litvin glanced at Voss. The journalist's figure now looked like a statue, his face as if made of stone, think lips squeezed tightly. He was obviously preparing to depart.
"The emissary said that he can take one of you to a safe place. I think—" Litvin started, but Yo said it first.
"I am staying with you. I must stay!" she gently touched McNeil's belly. "It is better to save two lives than one."
"Then move away from her," Voss muttered through gritted teeth. "Farther, farther! I need space… Like that!"
A gust of cold passed through the compartment, and McNeil was gone. Voss turned to Yo.
"I seem to be on a roll today, lovely lady. Perhaps I can repeat the trick."
He vanished into thin air with a quiet clap. Yo stood up, reached out to Litvin, but did not have time to touch him. A clap, a gust of icy wind, and she disappeared. Litvin was alone. Only a brown substance continued to pulsate at the center of the chamber, but he did not want of think of it as alive. Quasi-alive, maybe.
"It seems I've been given a gift," Litvin said, looking at the rhythmically pulsing mound. "Well, now it's just the two of us, pal, so let's settle our scores without any witnesses."
He took his time walking back to the passage. His heart was easy and light; with each step, he was leaving the world with his loved ones, Abby, Yo, the ancient fortress in Smolensk, the streets of his childhood, and the green riverbanks. He was departing his life, but was moving closer towards his fallen friends: Rodriguez, Corcoran, Chevreuse, Prizzi, and the others; and B.J. Cassidy, master after God, waited for him at the end of the path and was nodding approvingly, "Come on, Lieutenant Commander, do what needs to be done, and we'll meet you like an admiral, with an honor guard and a salute." "No need for salutes," Litvin replied, smiling, "I'll do one myself, the kind of salute that will shake the sky." It would be interesting to know what would happen after… He'd rather not suffocate or be crushed like a worm, he'd rather freeze to death, a noble and appropriate death for an astronaut. To burn would also be nice, but somewhere far away, beyond Luna; if this thing blew, there'd be nothing left from the Antarctic except a crater. And there really was no need for a giant hole at the pole…
Still chuckling, Litvin bent over the sigga, found the ring at the base of the proboscis, took the thin shiny needle, and listened. The humming in the container grew louder, as if the creatures living inside were trying to burst out like a pack of hungry wolves. The light coming out of the nerve outgrowth was strobe-like, blinking; the thick pink snake shuddered, expanding and contracting in a rapid, barely visible rhythm. Simultaneously with the flashes and shudders, something was knocking into Litvin's brain, trying to enter his mind with a frantic, desperate force. He kneeled, inserted the proboscis into the pink substance, and put his left hand on the ring. Then he pulled out the kaff, looked at the small sphere in thought, and put it near his temple.
It seemed as if a grenade exploded in his skull.
No-no-no-no, the disembodied voice muttered in fear, don't do this, don't, no need, no-no-no… master, symbiote… new master, don't do this, don't… all humans are symbiotes… better than Faata… open feelings, strong, clear… pride, hate, joy, love… don't do this… live, live!.. store, feel and obey, always obey… don't… no-no… master, owner, overlord… don't… no-no-no-no!..
This call, this cry was terrible. Litvin's heart, so recently full of joy and sacrificial light, suddenly appeared to be in a dark inferno. He felt the desperation of the ancient monstrosity begging for mercy, its cowardly readiness to submit, and there was a devilish temptation in that; to become its new overlord, a new symbiote, a source of emotions, which would be paid for with power and might. The kind of power and might nobody had ever dreamed of on Earth.
Don't do this, don't… no-no-no-no… no, master!..
"You've made the choice too late," Litvin spoke, ripping the kaff from his temple. "You've been playing too long. I don't need you, beast! No one needs you."
He stood up from his knees and, with a quick movement of his fingers, turned the ring.