Disclaimer: Earth 2 and all related characters belong to the Amblin Entertainment. No copyright infringement intended, and there's definitely no money being made. It would be extremely rude (and unprofitable) to sue me.
Chapter 3
They touched him, and a spike of memory drove through his mind with blinding intensity – everything else that was happening faded from his conscious mind.
Alonzo Solace was remembering.
That first day Morgan had seen the flying creatures. The moment when one of them had brushed a dry winged touch against his skin. That burning, startling instant of clarity. That touch had been a revelation he had scarcely comprehended at that moment.
And in the next moment, it had been too much.
Many voices. Many points of contact. All words blurring, all racing, all pouring at once into the single mind like a tidal wave.
/ you come / the keening of lost things / they said you would come / winged and glory air / sickness and wasting / the Terrians promised us / you will help / our flying, our being / dying / grieving / help us / help help / us / you / must / hear us / help us /
More imagery than words, but it was words, too, in a way he could not wholly comprehend. Like the Terrians, whom he understood, but had never quite been able to explain just how he understood. Unlike the Terrians, this communication was of a more physical kind – a kind of telepathy through touch – and it seared through neural pathways with a speed and volume and intensity that the human body was not made to withstand. His body had rebelled against it.
It had tasted like burning, like regret, like the strange, softly alien taste of Terrian dream planes, like all those ephemeral things that had no substance. It made no sense, and he/they had been able to feel his mind shutting down, shutting them out in self-preservation.
/ this must stop /
And he was never quite sure if that was his thought or theirs – the boundaries between them had grown so thin – but they had suddenly vanished with a resounding silence, a deafening emptiness. He was alone, glad, grateful. Stunned, and falling into unconsciousness.
But there were echoes, somewhere deeper in his mind, beneath that conscious level, that his mind did not know how to purge, maybe could not, and they were playing over and over and over again, / come / help us / help help / us / you / must / hear us / help us /
When Morgan Martin awoke, his one consolation was that he was still alive.
His eyes opened to a desolate expanse of rock and sky. From what he could see, he was lying on an outcropping of stone, high upon the cliffs. Far below, the canyons stretched like a dizzying maze. "We're up high again," he moaned despairingly. It was like being caught in a bad dream that kept running over and over. "I hate being up high." Sitting up, he glanced around, looking hopefully about for the MagPro or something else to arm himself with. Of course, it wasn't there. Oddly enough, the Terrian staff was. With a convulsive twitch of his leg, Morgan kicked it away. Vividly remembering that it had last been used to attack him, Morgan didn't dare touch it.
On the other side of him, Alonzo was sitting nearby, the gash on his cheekbone darkened to a deep purple, and he was struggling without much success to free his wrists from the rope still wrapped about them. "It's about goddamned time you woke up," he muttered darkly. "You want to untie this now?"
"I don't know!" Morgan snapped anxiously. "Are you gonna weird out on me again, go all alien or something?" He stabbed an accusing finger in the other man's face. "I knew there was something wrong with you! I just knew it! And look where we are now – we're way out in the middle of nowhere... again! This is all your fault! This is ridiculous! This is impossible! This is—"
"Morgan, for god's sake, just shut up before I kick you off the cliff," Alonzo growled.
With a fearful glance over his shoulder, Morgan hastily scuttled away from the edge and further away from Alonzo.
Alonzo sighed, dropping his head. "Look. I didn't mean that—"
"Yeah, well that's exactly the problem! You've been wandering around, pretending you're your usual cocky, arrogant self, and the next time I turn around, you're going into trances and spouting alien gibberish. So how do I know when you're really you?" Morgan knew he was freaking out. He always knew when he was doing it – he just had a hard time reining it back in once he really got going.
He stood abruptly, a chill shuddering through him as he realized some of those bird-Terrian-things were perched not too far above. They were clinging to the cliff face at almost impossible angles, heads craning to peer down upon them with large glittering eyes. Their wings made dry rustling sounds that made his skin crawl.
"Those things—! Those things are still here—!" he hissed frantically.
Alonzo didn't seem too impressed, tried grabbing at the rope around his wrists with his teeth. "Yeah, I know," he muttered almost unintelligibly. "How did you think you got up here?"
"What are they doing here?"
"They live here, Morgan."
"I mean..." Morgan sputtered briefly, then threw a glare at Alonzo. "You know what I mean! What do they want?"
The other man stared coolly at Morgan, as if debating whether or not he should tell him, then finally admitted, "I think they're waiting for me."
"What the hell is going on, Solace?"
"They... they need our help."
There was an uncertainty to the pilot's tone; Morgan wasn't sure if it was because he was hiding something, or if he honestly wasn't certain himself. "Then why didn't they just ask for it?" he challenged.
"They did. I just... didn't understand. Morgan," Alonzo sighed heavily, "would you please get this rope off me before I lose the use of my hands?"
He paused, having to consider the request for a moment. "O-okay." And he really hoped he wasn't making a fatal mistake. He eyed the discarded Terrian staff discreetly, wondering if he could use it as a weapon if he had to. Fortunately, Alonzo didn't seem to have noticed it there. Morgan moved in front of it, blocking it from view. "But if I do, you have to tell me what's really going on. Explain everything." Alonzo nodded, and Morgan began to work on the knotted cord.
"Did you have to tie it so tight?" Alonzo winced.
"It wasn't that tight before," Morgan replied. "You shouldn't have been yanking on it."
"I wanted to get loose. Besides, who knew that you'd know how to tie a rope properly?"
"You know, I'm not a complete idiot, Solace," he retorted, finally managing to loosen the knots and pull the cord free. "Bess showed me how." Alonzo actually chuckled a little at that, and it was the first bit of genuine good humor Morgan had received from him since before this whole thing started.
Rubbing his wrists, Alonzo fumbled for the gear set dangling around his neck. He frowned in puzzlement, obviously surprised to find it smashed, and then brushed a hand against his cheek, wincing. "Ouch. Damn it. When did—?" His eyes narrowed. "Morgan, did you hit me?"
"Uh..." His mind went blank. Definitely too long a pause. "Not hard," he lied. "It was... kind of an accident. And the gear set got broken, too. Sorry."
Alonzo shot him an exceedingly dirty look, then flung the ruined gear set aside and began muttering darkly under his breath about accidents.
"I'll try to fix it," Morgan offered quickly, gathering up the broken gear set and putting the pieces in his pocket, even as Alonzo snapped angrily, "With what?"
Not having an answer for that question, Morgan decided it was obviously time to change the subject. "So," he said, peering uneasily upward at the watching bird-things, "you gonna tell me what's going on?"
It was hard to explain.
But he tried anyway, tried to translate those strange images now flooding through his mind. Beings that were not quite Terrian – maybe once, long ago, but not now – and yet, they knew of the Terrians. Something had happened, some disaster had befallen their flocks – Alonzo was still not quite able to comprehend exactly what it was – but they had waited a long time for help. And a promise had been made – the human-creatures could help them, would help them... All of those images had been seared onto his mind when the creatures had first touched him, trying to communicate. But there had been too many of them, all too needy, too anxious, too demanding, and his conscious mind hadn't been able to handle it.
It was all of those things that he didn't have words for; spoken aloud, it was awkward and uncomfortable and sounded like raving. Like a madman trying to explain that yes, he really was sane. He knew that was how it sounded, even without seeing the expression on Morgan's face.
"How do you know all that?" Morgan asked, in that wary tone of voice he always used when he wasn't sure he believed the answers he was getting.
"It's a bit like... like trying to speak to the Terrians, except that it's... more physical. Through touch," he tried to explain, but obviously, it didn't help Morgan much. "They were just trying to communicate when they grabbed us."
"And you didn't remember any of it?" the other man asked with that ever-present edge of suspicion, but Alonzo really couldn't fault him for it at the moment. "So how come you know it now?"
Until the memories had abruptly resurfaced, he hadn't even been aware that the knowledge was there. "When we stopped to make camp yesterday, the area seemed... familiar, somehow." And from that moment, he now realized, he'd been wanting to come out here, to search... not for the Roanoke or for penal colonists, but out of a need to find this place. "When I saw this place, it suddenly made a connection. It triggered... something," he said, not quite able to explain what it was he felt moving inside him. "I started to remember."
"Why?"
Alonzo frowned, trying to sift through the jumbled memories now settled uneasily within his conscious mind. No clear answer came to mind. "They need our help—"
"So what—?"
"The Terrians promised them we would help, Morgan—"
"Again," Morgan exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "I say so what! Maybe the Terrians should have asked first. And even then, you can still say no. Since when do the Terrians give us orders? And where is it written that every alien species can come along and say 'hey, help us out with our problems!'? As if we don't have enough to worry about around here. Maybe they need to fix their own problems and just leave us alone."
It didn't work that way. It hadn't, not since they'd first set foot on G889. Humans had been here, had left their mark on this world, and for that fact alone, there was an implied debt.
And then there was Uly. In their first few days on this planet, the Terrians had healed him, and Devon had promised them 'anything' for that help. Even without knowing the price, she had promised anything and everything. Alonzo didn't blame her for her decision, and he didn't think it was the wrong decision. But the price kept rising, and the debts kept increasing. Maybe that was why she now lay in cold sleep, weeks of travel behind them. Perhaps one of those promises had come due.
Not one of them, he realized, not one of them would leave this planet unchanged.
Morgan sighed in exasperation. "You're gonna help them, aren't you? You've got that stupid look on your face again."
Alonzo felt his annoyance flare, but he didn't bother to respond to Morgan; instead, he glanced upwards at the winged beings who were restlessly waiting above. Waiting for him to follow.
"What is it with you!" Morgan snapped. "You get such a kick out of playing hero that you'd rather risk both our lives than do the intelligent thing and find a way out of here? Are you crazy? Do you honestly trust those things?"
Honestly...? He didn't know. But he had learned to trust the Terrians. And the Terrians wanted him here... didn't they? He'd felt their presence in his mind, in the half-instant before they struck out. They had deliberately disabled the DuneRail to prevent them from leaving. There had to be a reason for that. But there was a blurry edge of uncertainty to those thoughts that he couldn't quite explain – an echo of the uneasiness he might have felt within the Terrians.
"I don't have any choice, Morgan," he gritted, with a certainty he didn't completely understand. He got to his feet. "No one said you had to come along."
"Oh sure; I'll just camp out here. Or, better yet, climb down to the melted DuneRail – wherever that actually is – and roll it back to camp." His voice was miserable. "I guess I'm supposed to be grateful that your Terrian buddies left us a walking stick."
Walking stick? But before Alonzo even had a chance to ask what Morgan was going on about now, there was the rippling sound of wings dropping through the air, and a dark-tinged shape alighted next to them. The tall winged being drew itself up, peering intently at the two of them over its mottled gray wings. The dark eyes were like glass – expressionless and empty. Instinctively, Alonzo retreated a few steps.
"Do you even know what they want?" Morgan hissed, hovering safely behind him, the cliff wall at his back. "Can you talk to them," he suggested in his next breath, "ask them if they'll let us go? Maybe... maybe they'll take us back if you ask..."
The creature extended a wing toward him, an invitation to communicate.
He didn't want to. Not now that he remembered just how the touch had burned, how the chaotic language of their minds had pressed almost unbearably upon his own. But, as if responding to a subconscious cue, he stood rooted to the spot, and stretched out his hand.
"Alonzo," Morgan's voice issued timidly, "are... are you sure you want to be doing that—?"
As he touched the wingtip, Alonzo gasped, doubling over, an icy, acid-eating pain cutting at him from within. Pain.
And sorrow. Sorrow almost as hot and burning as the sickness. He felt the tears leaking from his eyes. The young ones, all dying, the children, oh no, all the children dying. A wracking sob ripped from his lungs.
Must be stopped, must be made whole, must be. The death that is not part of the cycle, the death that comes too soon, the sickness that comes from outside, from elsewhere.
Distantly, he heard Morgan's voice, felt the other man's grip on his shoulders, forcibly pulling him away. With the physical link broken, the pain stopped, the voices and the images stopped, but all of it continued to reverberate through his mind.
"Yale..."
He'd been in the middle of a data search, examining the past geographic surveys for possible routes beyond these canyons and further on to New Pacifica, when he abruptly became aware True's voice calling him, the faintly strident tone enough to break his concentration. Disengaging from his internal contemplation of the data libraries, he lifted his eyes to see True peering in the open door of his tent. "Yale...?"
"Yes? What is it, True?"
"Um... can you come get Uly?"
That was an odd request. "Why?" the cyborg asked, setting aside the maps and rising to his feet with a feeling of faint alarm. "Is there something wrong, True?"
"I don't know." The young girl seemed a little uncertain. "He's acting funny. He was asking for you."
"Very well. Where is he?"
"Just outside. Not far." True led him a short distance away, and Yale was relieved to see Uly sitting on a small boulder, waiting for them. "We were just playing," True explained, "and then he climbed on the rock and he wouldn't come down. He said he wanted you to come get him."
"Uly?" Yale called as they drew nearer. The boy was seemingly unharmed, but made no move to climb off the boulder, patiently waiting for Yale. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," Uly replied, "I'm okay. But I don't want to walk back. I don't like it here," he stated plaintively. "I think I'm allergic to the sand." With that cryptic remark, he held up his hands, palms out, for Yale's inspection. The skin was discoloured to a vivid red.
Yale suppressed an expression of surprise, well aware that Uly would be watching him closely. "When did this happen?" he asked, gently examining Uly's blistering palms, then quickly took True's hands. Hers were unblemished. "Where were the two of you playing?"
"Just around here," Uly said, and True added, "We didn't go outside the camp at all."
Casting a glance around at the surrounding area, Yale couldn't see anything but the innocuous and ever-present expanse of rocks, sand and small scrubby plant-life. "Did you touch anything unusual – any of those plants? You didn't go near the river?" Both children shook their heads. "And your feet hurt as well?" he prompted Uly.
"Yeah, kind of," Uly shrugged. "But not so much as my hands. It's just itchy."
"So what do you think it is, Yale?" True queried, nervously clutching at her own hands.
"Well... it appears to be some sort of skin irritation," Yale replied evenly, not wanting to alarm either child. "Don't worry, Uly. We'll have Julia take a look at you – I'm sure she'll have something to make you feel better." Carefully, he gathered the little boy into his arms.
"I'll go tell her you're coming," True said, and was off and running toward the medical tent before Yale had finished picking up Uly.
"You know," Uly confided to Yale, in a tone of deep exasperation, "I told True that I was allergic to the sand, but she wouldn't listen."
Julia's face was set in the familiar mask of professionalism, which she lightened now and again with a smile at Uly, but Yale could detect the concern beneath the expression. She passed her diaglove over his outstretched hands several times, even after she'd sprayed the blistered palms with medication.
"How are your hands feeling now?" she asked.
"Better," Uly decided. "They don't itch any more. Are they going to stay red like this?"
"No, they should improve by tomorrow. But you're going to have to be a little more careful tonight. No running around with True until I say so. The skin is very irritated right now, and it needs to rest to get better, okay?"
"That's okay," he decided after a moment's consideration. "I don't want to go outside any more. I don't think it's very good for me."
"Apparently not. Uly," she ventured, "are you sure you and True didn't find something unusual while you were playing today? Something you might have touched, even if only for a moment?"
"No. There isn't very much out here," he informed her. "It's kind of a boring place. It's all empty. Even the Terrians don't come here. They say it's cursed."
"The Terrians say?" She continued moving around Uly, making small adjustments to her diaglove as she went. "When were you talking to them?"
"Um, this afternoon, I think," Uly stated casually, as if it were an entirely unremarkable topic. "One of them was somewhere in the valleys here – but he couldn't stay, so he went away again. But I – Ow!" He jerked sharply as Julia touched his back. "That hurts!"
"What's wrong?" Yale asked, stepping near.
"There's blistering on your back as well, Uly," Julia stated, letting Yale step near to see. The rash wasn't nearly as severe as it had been on Uly's hands, but there was a noticeable reaction. "How did that happen?"
"True put a handful of sand down my shirt," he said petulantly. Yale exchanged an incredulous glance with Julia. It seemed preposterous, and yet both Uly and True were resolutely maintaining their stories – they hadn't gone anywhere and they hadn't touched anything; they'd just been playing outside, in the dust and the sand. "This is all her fault! When Mr. Danziger gets back, I'm going to tell on her, and then she's really going to get it—"
"Now, now, Uly," Yale interceded as Julia began to spray another treatment on the boy's back. "You shouldn't be angry with True. There was no way she could have known that this would happen."
"But I told her not to! And she still threw the sand at me!"
"She told me that she did that after you threw a rock at her," Yale countered sternly.
"But she told me she was collecting rocks," Uly replied in an eminently reasonable tone of voice, even though he squirmed a little bit under Yale's gaze. "I was just giving her one I found..."
"Uly," Julia interrupted, "I'm going to give you something that will help you heal while you sleep tonight. That way, you should be mostly recovered by morning. But you're still going to have to be careful – if it is the sand that's bothering you, we can't have you going outside. It's very important that you to check with either Yale or me before you go anywhere, okay?"
"Okay."
She pressed the injector against his neck. "There you go. You'll be all better in no time." Glancing at Yale, she walked to the counter, starting to remove her diaglove and put her medical tools away.
Yale moved to join her. "Well?" he murmured. "What is it?"
"It's exactly what it appears to be," she replied in an undertone, "a violent inflammation of the skin. It isn't serious," she reassured him, "and with the treatment I've given him, the rash should subside overnight and disappear completely within a day or two. I included a sedative in his medication, just to help him sleep through the night so that he doesn't scratch at the skin while it's healing. What disturbs me is that I can't find the cause of the irritation. As it is localized in specific areas, I presume an external cause, and yet there's no trace of anything unusual on his skin."
"Could it be some after-effect of the Syndrome?"
"I thought of that," she admitted. "But if so, it's nothing I've encountered before. However, as Uly is the first Syndrome-child to be cured, I don't have any precedents to refer to. Still," she frowned, "he's shown no symptoms at all before this, no indication of any after-effects. I'm more inclined to think that it has something to do with our surroundings."
"I see." He considered the possibilities. "Perhaps this area may be more contaminated than we anticipated?"
"No." She shook her head, still deep in thought. "No, the contamination levels are low – and I ran the tests more than once to confirm that. Long-term exposure would be a problem, but that would take months. I suppose it is possible that Uly might be more sensitive to the contamination than we are. It may actually be the sand that is bothering him. Past incidents have shown that Uly is linked more closely to the Terrians and to this planet than are the rest of us."
"Yes, you may be right. And Uly did mention the Terrians..." Yale turned back toward Uly to question him further, but the boy's eyes were closed, and he was slumped against the side of the chair he was sitting in. Already asleep. He made a mental note to ask him about it tomorrow, especially in view of the fact that the Terrians – except for the winged variety – seemed to have been conspicuously absent from this area. "Do you know if Alonzo has experienced any Terrian dreams since we ventured into this area?"
His query seemed to jolt Julia from her thoughts, and she seemed almost startled. "No," she recovered quickly. "No Terrian dreams."
Yale recognized the taut expression on her face as worry. "I take it there has been no word yet from Alonzo or Morgan?" he asked gently.
"No. Not yet," Julia replied, glancing at the open doorway. The late afternoon sun was visibly dropping through the sky, and the two men should have returned by now. "Danziger and Walman have gone out to search for them. I told Bess it was probably nothing," she said, "just a gear failure, or something like that..."
"We have no reason to believe otherwise."
Julia surprised him by shaking her head. "I'm not so sure. I'm a doctor – I'm supposed to be able to gather conclusions from the symptoms I see. In their own way, both Uly and Alonzo have a connection to this planet..." Her voice trailed off, and she turned a pensive look towards the young boy. "You should take Uly to bed. He won't wake until morning."
"I will. Thank you, Julia." Briefly, he put his hand on her shoulder, trying to offer some reassurance. "Let me know if you need any assistance."
Not for the first time, Danziger silently cursed the bad luck that had left all of them stranded on this planet with only three vehicles. It was too few, even for a group as small as they were.
With Alonzo and Morgan apparently gone missing along with the DuneRail, he'd had to get Baines to double-time it back to camp with the ATV. Although the small vehicle was much quicker than the ponderous TransRover, Danziger didn't want to push it too hard, especially since it had already put in a full day's work. The last thing he needed was to burn out the engine before he found the two missing men.
"Something coming up on the scanners," he shouted over his shoulder. "Looks like the DuneRail, just ahead." The ATV rattled along as Danziger steered it over the uneven ground as quickly as he could without dislodging Walman, who was clinging to the back end of the vehicle in a standing position. It couldn't be a very comfortable ride, but Walman bore it without complaint.
The valley twisted round like a maze, disorienting in that every turn seemed to reveal the same landscape ahead as behind. Rocks and dust and that wandering, stunted river. Obviously, Alonzo had gone looking for that downed spaceship that Julia thought must have crashed somewhere in the vicinity.
Danziger could have kicked himself for agreeing to let the sometimes-too-impulsive pilot go scouting, but the thought of getting rid of Morgan for an entire afternoon had seemed too good to pass up. And maybe he should have questioned that further, too. Alonzo and Morgan hadn't exactly been on the best of terms lately... not since that whole 'flying Terrian' thing. He'd thought that maybe Morgan was finally getting over that, especially since he'd apparently suggested the scouting expedition, but now Danziger found himself wondering just what the two of them had been up to. The fact that they'd lost contact with them was not all that alarming in itself, but coupled with all those other unresolved issues...
Danziger just hoped that his suspicions weren't coming too late to do any good.
Coming around a bend in the canyons, he caught sight of the DuneRail directly ahead. Danziger felt his stomach tighten uneasily at the sight of the vehicle sitting empty and abandoned. He drew the ATV slowly nearer before bringing it to a halt a short distance away. Walman hopped off the back of the ATV, seeming to share his caution. "Alonzo?" Danziger called out, loudly. "Morgan? Are you there?"
No answer.
Climbing out of the ATV, he cautiously approached the DuneRail; Walman circled round, advancing upon it from the other side.
A dark black streak marred the side of the vehicle, and the rear tire had been flattened. Those were the only obvious signs that anything had gone wrong. "Still a bit warm," Danziger noted, pressing his hand to the engine. "They can't have been gone all that long." But he noted that the vehicle's provisions were intact. If Morgan and Alonzo had continued without the DuneRail, they'd done so without taking any supplies. That alarmed him more than the sight of the abandoned vehicle itself.
"Danziger." Walman stood on the opposite side of the vehicle, knelt down to retrieve something from the dusty ground. "The MagPro. It's just lying here. Still activated."
"Has it been fired?"
Walman shook his head, carefully powering down the weapon. "No, just looks like someone dropped it here and left it."
Danziger growled in wordless frustration, glancing helplessly around at the surroundings, and then abruptly stopped as he caught sight of his own dusty footprints. Just his, leading from the ATV to the DuneRail. Clambering through the vehicle, he peered at the ground where Walman was standing. Aside from Walman's footprints, there was a single trail of scuffling footprints winding in a short wandering circuit around the side of the vehicle and back. At one point, the dust had been kicked up as if there had been a struggle, but there was nothing else. No trail leading off into the distance. "Damn it, what the hell is going on?"
"Do you think they ran into some penal colonists after all?" Walman suggested, apprehensively holding his weapon at the ready as he scanned the surrounding walls of stone towering above them.
"Not unless they were really light on their feet," Danziger replied, gesturing. "They didn't leave a trail."
Walman followed his gaze to the dusty footprints, then cast his eyes around, bewildered. "But... they couldn't just have vanished," he protested.
"No," Danziger agreed slowly, thinking of Terrians – winged or otherwise. "We need to get the others out here," he decided, pulling on his gear. "The TransRover has better scanning equipment, and I've got the feeling that we're going to need all the help we can get."
"Maybe, but it's late afternoon and they're already down four people," Walman pointed out, "you, me, Morgan and Alonzo. There's no way they're going to be able to pack up camp and move out here tonight."
"Good point." Danziger mulled over their options, finding them frustratingly sparse. "All right then, let's keep going. We've got the coordinates for Julia's last gear transmission from them – that's as good a place as any to start. With any luck, maybe we'll find them ourselves before it gets dark." The two men jumped back into the ATV. Under his breath, Danziger muttered, "Our luck can't be all bad, can it?"
If Walman heard, he chose not to answer that.
"I think that's a really stupid idea," Morgan suggested, his voice floating up to Alonzo.
"Know what, Morgan?" he grunted, making sure his handholds were firm and then scrambling a short distance higher, "I'm not really interested in your opinion right now."
"If you fall," Morgan warned persistently, "I'm not going to be able to catch you."
"Oh, that's a surprise," Alonzo muttered to himself. Morgan's grim predictions notwithstanding, Alonzo didn't plan to fall. While steep, the rock face was relatively easy to climb with many niches and outcroppings to hold onto.
"Your bird-friends flew away," Morgan informed him. "They're way up high now. Do you think they're still watching us?"
"Can we... talk later?" Alonzo grumbled between breaths. "Kind of busy right now."
Morgan fell silent. No telling how long that would last.
Alonzo pulled himself over the top edge of the rise, dislodging a shower of loose stone as he clambered up onto relatively flat ground. He heard an annoyed protest from Morgan, but didn't pay any attention. The plateau Alonzo now stood on was rocky and treacherous – just like all of the surrounding area. It was not, he mused, made for creatures without wings. Which made him wonder just once again why the Terrians had insisted that he would be the one to help these creatures. But he had not dreamt to the Terrians for some time now – perhaps he was mistaken... Although he'd tried to tone down his own doubts to keep Morgan from panicking, the images in his mind were anything but clear.
The winged beings' desperation had wailed like a siren song through him – he'd been made painfully aware of that when he'd touched them again. And he now understood that these high cliffs held their nesting grounds, a sacred place, the place where all hatchlings were birthed. But something had come, something had happened, and now their young ones were dying of illness, and many of those that survived and took to the air were struck down by... something.
Something they had no name for, no understanding of. To them, it was simply nameless evil, a blight upon their sacred grounds.
What he didn't understand was what it had to do with him, with any of them. Unless... unless it really was the Roanoke that had come crashing down here, contaminating the land. The thought chilled him. He did not want to be responsible for that as well... But that simply wasn't possible. The ship would have burned up in the atmosphere – it must have...
"You okay up there?" Morgan's voice issued anxiously from below.
Shaking off his thoughts, Alonzo got to his feet, calling back over his shoulder, "I'm fine. It's not as hard a climb as it looks like. And this is the top – it doesn't go any higher."
"So what's up there?"
Alonzo glanced around. Nothing much that he could see so far. "I'll take a look." He picked his way carefully through the rubble, puzzling over the amount of loose rock. The canyons below seemed ancient, filled with sand and giant boulders and great monoliths of stone. Up here, there was a scattering of thousands of stones that were fist-sized and smaller, as if part of the mountain had been pulverized. Some of the stones gave off a dark sparkle in the bright afternoon light. Frowning, he stopped, knelt down to pick one up. The cold stone was glassy smooth in his hands, almost as though it had been fused by a sudden, immense blast of heat.
As if a ship had come down somewhere near here, after all... His stomach churned uneasily.
A shouting voice carried up on the wind. "Hey! Can you hear me or what?"
Alonzo dropped the stone, hurrying back as quickly as he could on the uncertain ground. "What is it?" he called, peering cautiously over the edge. From up here, he could see Morgan staring expectantly upward. And from up here, the ledge Morgan was standing on looked exceptionally small, and the drop beyond it yawned exceptionally large. Alonzo briefly wondered exactly how they were going to get down from here, then pushed that thought out of his mind. "What's wrong?"
"What's going on up there?"
Exasperated, Alonzo replied sharply, "Nothing. There's not much here. I can't see anything other than rock and..." He paused, abruptly catching sight of something off in the other direction. The sunlight glowed dully on gray metal just barely visible from where he stood. "Wait a minute. I think maybe there is something up here."
"Be careful!" Morgan's voice wailed helpfully as Alonzo moved away.
There was a peculiar mixture of feelings in him as he moved toward the distant shape that had caught his eye. Excitement and hope and fear and trepidation, and he couldn't even say which one was twisting his stomach into knots. But what he was seeing really was metal, man-made and scorched and burned and crumpled, and he was half-running, half-sliding over the uneven ground, down into the crater-shaped depression where it must have crashed.
Not the Roanoke advance ship, surely – it was far too small for that – but maybe a fragment. Whatever it was, it was big enough that—
There was movement, a whirring metallic sound, a tiny flicker of red light, and Alonzo skidded to a halt. It was instinct, more than anything else, that saved his life – perhaps a remnant of those images the winged Terrians had given him – without thinking, he flung himself to the ground. A needle-thin, deadly accurate beam of laser-light cut through the air where he had been standing only a moment before.
Half-an-instant too late, he realized it wasn't the wreckage of a ship at all, but the battered and still-functioning form of an oversized deep-space probe robot.
It whirred again, adjusting its aim as it turned again toward him. He rolled, tried to scramble to his feet, and there was no way he was going to be able to get out of its way in time—
Coming almost near enough to touch, three of the winged creatures swooped by overhead, flying past at an incredible speed. The targeting mechanism spun toward them, sending a burst of laser-fire out towards the flying creatures. Perhaps they'd played this game before, for they twisted through the air, somehow managing to elude the barrage, and quickly sailed out of range, and then out of sight.
Alonzo leapt to his feet, diving for the only cover he could see – a large boulder not more than ten steps away, and even so, he barely made it to safety. A fine spray of rock dust filled the air as the laser-beams struck against the stone, but the boulder remained intact. Not a destructive beam then, or just not powerful enough? From what little he'd been able to see, it was obviously a probe robot, and apparently damaged, but at the moment, he didn't much care who it belonged to or what it was doing here. He was more worried about the fact he'd found the only available cover. The rest of the area led bare and barren up the long slope he'd come down. He'd be a dead easy target if he moved out from behind here.
Maybe if the robot lost sight of him, it would eventually go back to whatever it was doing and that would give him a moment or two to get away. Long moments passed with no further sound. He peered cautiously around the edge, barely managing to duck back in time as it fired on him again.
Damn damn damn.
"Identify... Identify... Target sample acquired... Identify..."
Obviously, he'd found the cause of the winged Terrians' problems. Now, how was he going to get out of here without getting shot in the back?
Lots of people did stupid things all the time, and for stupid reasons, too. Reasons like 'he's been gone a long time' and 'is that the wind making those weird noises up here or something else' and 'it's going to be getting dark soon, so if you're going to do anything, you'd better do it now'.
They were all sort of good reasons, in their own way, he supposed, and the only really alarming thing was that he had somehow convinced himself that it was a good idea to leave the ledge and climb up this rock wall. That if Mr. I-Can-Do-Anything Solace could scale the side of a mountain so easily, well then surely Mr. Used-to-be-a-Bureaucrat-who-made-more-money-than-you Martin could probably do it too.
There was a flaw in that reasoning, somewhere. He wasn't quite sure where, but it was taking him a lot longer to climb up here than it had Alonzo. Maybe it was because Morgan knew that if he fell, he would really fall and die. He half-suspected that Alonzo thought he could just fly away or something. The guy seriously lacked any sense of his own mortality.
Anyway, these weren't good thoughts to have while you were climbing. Without any ropes. Even if it wasn't a really long climb up, it was a really long drop down. So he tried to just concentrate on hanging on and getting to the top. And the top was nice and close now, and he was pretty sure he was going to make it after all.
Heaving himself over the edge with a giddy sigh of relief, Morgan let himself lie there for a minute. Just to catch his breath. And maybe stop some of the trembling in his arms and legs. "I can't believe I just did that," he muttered, still not quite sure whether that was the bravest thing or the dumbest thing he had ever done in his life, and was vaguely disappointed that there was no one here to witness his feat.
He was tired enough that he did actually consider just resting a while longer, but could almost hear Bess' voice scolding: 'You always say you're just going to rest for a moment, and then you sleep for hours.' Of course, she was right. With a wheezy chuckle, Morgan obediently sat up, faintly amazed that even in his daydreams, Bess was always right.
The late-afternoon sun was already dropping downward in the sky, and Alonzo really really had been gone a long time now. Pulling himself to his feet, he looked around in all directions. Despite his dislike of heights, he was struck by the amazing view this peak afforded. The canyons stretched round and round in a confusing jumble below, but he could see stretches of smoother landscape not so far in the distance – the way to New Pacifica, maybe?
But they could figure that out later. Alonzo had said he'd seen something up here... Where? Morgan started circling the outer edges of the peak, figuring that eventually he'd have to run into some hint as to where Alonzo had gone.
He made his way cautiously through the slippery rock, but there didn't seem to be very much up here. It was barren and empty, and the long shadows cast by the setting sun only made it seem that much more desolate. Even those bird-Terrians didn't venture near here, but seemed to cluster down below, or on the faces of the nearby cliffs, or flying so high overhead that they were harmless specks up in the clouds. That was fine with him. When he'd peered over the edges earlier, looking for a possible way down, they had hissed threateningly up at him, their wings fluttering and snapping as they shuffled around to block the few accessible paths Morgan had seen. Alonzo thought they were just 'asking for help.' Hah. To him, it looked like they weren't going to take no for an answer. And Morgan didn't care what Alonzo said, he still didn't like—
Quite suddenly, he stepped over the rise of a hill, and saw both Alonzo and a massive, half-shattered robotic thing down below, which his mind helpfully identified as one of the old-model data scavengers that Interstellar Development used to launch. Alonzo was crouched awkwardly behind a large boulder, and the probe robot was just sitting there, announcing something in a droning monotone, but Morgan couldn't quite catch the words from where he was standing.
Alonzo saw him first, shouted, "Morgan! Get out – get back—!" and made an abortive attempt to wave him away, cringing back against the rock as the probe robot fired on his movements.
"Oh my g—" He should have kept quiet, but stifled his exclamation too late. A portion of the robot lurched about as it registered Morgan's presence, targeting mechanism spinning around towards him. He flung himself backwards, tumbling down the other side of the rocky slope away from the robot. He heard it fire several times.
"Identify," the metallic voice repeated insistently from just the other side the ridge. "Secondary sample... Primary sample... Identify..."
For a moment, Morgan was almost on his feet to run, and then realized that it wasn't coming any closer. If it were, it would have been on top of him already. If it were, Alonzo wouldn't be able to hide from it by sitting behind a rock. It had looked damaged. Maybe it was immobilized. A reassuring thought, since that meant it couldn't get at him if he stayed out of reach... but then how was Alonzo going to get out of there?
This wouldn't be the first stupid thing he'd done today, he thought as he shuffled to the side and crawled upwards towards the crest of the hill, but he couldn't think of anything else.
"Identify..." the voice repeated monotonously. "Multiple samples acquired... Identify..."
"M-Morgan Martin," he said tremulously, still lying safely out of sight. "L-level Four."
A brief silence, which he hadn't expected, and then, "Authorization code..."
Morgan blinked with surprise. That was a good sign. "Ah... um... yes... authorization code... Gamma-twenty-twelve-Y."
"Invalid."
Maybe that code was too new for this thing. When the hell had they been sending out those probe robots? Same time as the Pontel project, or before? He'd had to memorize various master codes for a number of various technologies related to Interstellar Development, and this was one of them. Morgan tried desperately to sift through the layers of information he used to have to deal with daily, and apparently had begun to forget since coming to this planet.
"Uh... authorization code Theta-nine-seventy-three-C...?"
"Code accepted. Martin-Morgan voiceprint added to security database. Waiting."
Waiting. Oh... "Um... Disengage probe protocols," he suggested, peeking carefully over the top of the ridge, and was enormously relieved when it didn't fire on him. "And give status report...?"
The device obediently began rattling off statistics – identification number, launch date, current status. Morgan listened with only half an ear, very cautiously getting to his feet. The robot didn't pause, but continued its information bulletin. Morgan thought he'd melt with relief. He'd done it. He'd actually done it!
He climbed over the ridge and down the slope to get a better look at the thing. Damn, but that was an outdated piece of technology. Big and bulky and slow – but obviously sturdy. From the looks of it, it would have been launched a good twenty or thirty years before Eden Advance ever left station-space. And from the look of the scarred rock all around, he guessed it had blown off the top of the peak when it crashed down here. Not even ten metres away, the ground dropped away in a ragged symmetrical shape that might have been caused by an explosion. It was probably just sheer luck the probe had landed safely up here instead of tumbling endlessly down the mountainside. He was faintly amazed it was still functioning.
"Ugh, what the hell—?" He almost lost his footing as he stepped into a dark slippery liquid that was puddled around the tail end of the robot. Quickly jumping away, Morgan moved around the side of the robot, edging up onto slightly higher, less treacherous ground.
By the time he'd thought to glance around for Alonzo, the other man had already cautiously emerged from his hiding spot, and had a look of utter astonishment on his face. "I don't believe it," he murmured, coming to stand next to Morgan.
"Well, I am a Level Four bureaucrat," Morgan reminded him, unable to resist swaggering a little bit. "I had all the codes memorized," he added, tapping his temple knowingly. He hadn't managed to remember his own birthday or wedding anniversary or anything like that, but he'd been able to recite those codes in his sleep. "Up to about twenty-two years ago, anyway. But this clunker was launched way before us, so the old authorization codes are still good."
"What is it?" Alonzo asked.
"Uh... well, mostly just a data scavenger model. SX-1500, it looks like. They were used for deep space exploration. You could program it to take readings, collect physical samples, or whatever you wanted. It would then transmit its findings back, but I don't suppose that's working any more." Morgan paused, then stopped to wonder. The device was functioning better than he would have expected, given its age and the damage it had taken. It gave him a weird feeling to think that it might still be transmitting, and that more than two decades later, some station flunky would be able to hear him and Alonzo standing here having this discussion. "Fortunately for us, it's got a voice interface, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to control it without some kind of data uplink. Most of them had a manual interface, too, if you could get close enough. I wonder where..."
The probe robot continued its report as if both men were listening, informing them that it had crashed on G889, that the propulsion system was damaged, had gone into emergency shutdown and could not safely be restarted without significant repairs. Morgan snorted, doubting even Danziger could repair this thing. It looked like it had lost at least two engines on the way down, and the casings surrounding the remaining engines were riddled with deep cracks.
"Aha!" Morgan crowed excitedly, finding the small keypad and diagnostic screen. "Now we're in business!" He wasn't quite familiar with the cryptic readouts it was displaying – it was probably some kind of technical shorthand; maybe Yale or Danziger would be able to decipher it. While the robot was severely damaged and obviously immobilized, Morgan didn't doubt that it was housing a lot of extremely useful equipment. Like the long-range scanners, the communication systems, the—
"Can we get rid of it?"
Morgan blinked with surprise, shaking his head as if he hadn't heard right. "What would you want to do that for? I've got it under control. We can use it to call the others and get down from here." He brightened considerably at the thought. Pulling the remnants of the gear set from his pocket, he took note of the comm codes it used, then started to input the information. "And if we can get it working properly," he added, "it can help us find New Pacifica—"
"Morgan," Alonzo said in a strained voice, "it's been killing the flying Terrians. These are their nesting grounds. It's been shooting them out of the sky. Killing their young, poisoning the water..." His eyes were haunted, and he threw a dark glare at the probe robot as if it had personally harmed him.
Instinctively, Morgan followed his gaze to the trail of liquid slowly leaking from the remaining engines. That must have been the source of the contamination Julia had found, he realized. This model was certainly outdated enough that it would have been using antriox as engine coolant – the toxic chemical was seeping from the ruined engines, must have been doing so for years and years. There was a dark, oily stain creeping down the rocky slope and over the edge.
"You... You've been remembering things that aren't you again, haven't you?" Morgan asked. He didn't know why it unnerved him so much, it just did. Maybe those bird-creatures really didn't mean any harm by bringing them up here, maybe they did just want help, maybe they even had a right to ask for it – but every time he saw that odd not-quite-Alonzo look in the other man's eyes, it freaked him out.
Alonzo's dark-eyed gaze seemed especially piercing, and he abruptly whirled and grabbed at the robot, tearing open a maintenance panel to reach inside. An electrical current arced briefly through both the man and the robot, and then Alonzo staggered backwards, dropping awkwardly to the ground, his hands trembling and his eyes gone glassy.
"Alonzo—!"
"Ohhhh... that really hurt..."
"Are you insane?" Morgan shrieked. The pilot's limbs were quivering in the aftereffect of the current, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. He was lucky. If the unit had been functioning at full power, Morgan didn't doubt that it would have fried him. "Are you actually trying to kill yourself?"
"Why does everyone always ask that?" Alonzo asked, almost petulant for a moment, then he shuddered again. "I think I'm going to be sick."
"Security compromised," the data scavenger repeated insistently, "loading defense protocols. Security compromised. Loading—"
Morgan whirled in alarm. "Override. Override!"
"Level five clearance required for defense protocol override."
Morgan's mind went briefly blank. "But I... I don't have level five clearance," he countered wanly, not that that argument was going to do any good. It occurred to him that now might be a good moment to implement his backup plan – running away. But he hesitated, wavering uncertainly as he heard the robotic voice suddenly state, "Override initiated."
Thank god; thank god. Interstellar Development hadn't been in the habit of equipping standard probes with defense protocols – that meant this machine must have been special Council hardware, and he'd heard that their defensive measures were usually lethal. Even if the unit was damaged, Morgan had no desire to test his luck at such close range. "How...?"
"Initiating data uplink," the robot announced. "Completed."
The words had scarcely registered in Morgan's mind, along with the realization that this development couldn't be anything but bad, when a cable suddenly shot out of the side of the machine with lightning quick speed, coiling tightly around his leg and retracting almost as quickly. Yanked off his feet, Morgan fell to the ground, and was dragged up against the data scavenger's metal hull. "Alonzo!" he gasped, clawing uselessly at the graveled stones, "help!"
Still stunned, the other man barely managed to stumble to his feet and move out of the way as another serpentine cable snapped outward to snare him. His movements awkward and unsteady, Alonzo reeled blindly backwards, focused only on getting away.
"Watch out—!" Morgan screamed, too late, and watched in horror as Alonzo yelped with surprise and inadvertently tumbled backwards over the side of the cliff.
Morgan gaped, felt his breath catch in his throat, and for a long moment he simply stared, desperate to disprove what he had just seen with his own eyes. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god..." The words were spilling out of his mouth without his even being aware of them. Blinking in stunned disbelief, Morgan tried to ignore the sick feeling that was now settling in his stomach, the pain in his snared leg, and the awful realization that he was now alone up here. "This can't be happening, this simply cannot be happening—!"
"Well, well, well," a metallic voice sounded from the machine holding him captive. "If it isn't Morgan Martin."