Nexus: Ascension, page 25
Seventeen days in this . . . this coffin, she thought. She peeled the helmet back from her head, felt a light breeze finger her hair. Carefully, she disconnected the catheters and undid the middle seam of the suit; within seconds she had wiggled free from the multiple, insulating layers of material. She stood naked; her suit lay at her feet like a shed skin.
She examined herself. Other than roughened blisters on her heels and soles of her feet, and a general grime that seemed to film her entire body, she could find no deleterious effects from the suit. Her broken arm, however, looked pale and withered where skin emerged from the yellowed plasticast. She flexed her fingers experimentally. Sharp flashes shot up her forearm. But they were not as intense as she had feared. When she flexed again, she winced, but found the pain bearable. Her body was healing itself.
She pulled the backpack from her suit. Then she grabbed the collar and dragged her suit down to the shore, stepping gingerly over the loose rocks and pebbles. Wading knee-deep into the water, she flung it with her good arm as far as she could. The suit landed on the surface several metres out with a flat, slapping sound; it drifted there for a moment, before it turned once like a lazy swimmer flipping onto his back, then sank quickly from sight.
She splashed water over her face, breasts, and stomach, and carefully bathed her wounded arm. Squatting, she scooped up a handful of sand and gravel and rubbed her legs until they tingled. The grime relented, slid from her body. The sensation was wonderful. It seemed an eternity since she’d experienced anything other than the uniform clamminess of the suit. She sat down in waist-deep water—it was cool but not unpleasant. Despite the strangeness of her surroundings, Liis relaxed, felt the inescapable creep of exhaustion; her head began to nod. Not yet, she thought dully.
Reluctantly, she dragged herself to her feet. It was all she had time for now.
She picked her way back across the rocky shore. Hebuiza’s head was still bent. Liis reached down to pick up his suit.
“No.” Hebuiza’s eyes were open, but rheumy. He blinked several times, as if he were trying to keep them focused. “Leave it.” A bubble of spittle formed between his withered lips, popped.
Liis straightened. “We’ve got to hide these suits. And you’re in no shape to do it.”
Her words seemed to rouse the Facilitator. His head lifted, the tendons in his neck going rigid. He fixed Liis with a withering look; his head began its characteristic bobbing motion. “No!” Placing his palms on the ground, he tried to push himself to his feet, but his arms shook and collapsed under him. He slid back down against the bole of the tree. He glared at Liis, as if he blamed his incapacitation on her. She met his gaze calmly. After a moment, he averted his eyes.
“What happened?”
Hebuiza tried to shrug, but the effort must have aggravated his wound for his face twisted into a grimace of pain. “Nothing,” he hissed from between clenched teeth.
“Nothing?”
“I fell.” He looked almost embarrassed. “My head must have hit the lake first. I don’t remember.” He blinked and looked around. “I remember being underwater. Then here.” Hebuiza’s gaze wandered; he seemed to forget their conversation. “We’re inside, aren’t we?”
Liis ignored his question. Yilda dragged him out, stripped off his suit, then left him. But where had the other Facilitator gone? Hebuiza, even if he knew, wouldn’t tell her. Or at least not tell the entire truth. Liis decided she’d had enough of these games. They were inside the dome. It was time for some answers.
Taking a step closer, she locked eyes with Hebuiza. “Who is Yilda?”
The Facilitator looked up at her in surprise, his head weaving back and forth. For an instant, his guard seemed to drop. The large Adam’s apple in his neck bobbed. “I . . . I don’t understand your question.” It was the first time she could ever remember him seeming unsure about anything.
“You know damn well what I mean.” Liis stepped closer so she towered above him. “He knew exactly how to get into the dome. Remember, he was the one who insisted on bringing the flares, then in keeping them when we lightened our loads. He told us to discard everything, except for exactly the things we needed. And why else did he use the ice screw and rope unless he knew about the drop on this side? No matter how good his intelligence was, he couldn’t have had those kinds of details.”
Hebuiza looked away; his head stilled. “He’s a Facilitator,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Liis was incredulous. “You don’t know,” she said. “Do you?”
“He’s a—”
“Facilitator,” Liis finished in exasperation. She waved off his words. “Yeah, I heard.” Apparently Yilda had felt it prudent to keep everyone in the dark about his plans. Including Hebuiza. She stooped, grabbed the collar of his suit.
Hebuiza’s eyes flashed again. But this time he kept his mouth clamped shut.
Fuck you, Liis thought, but her anger had no edge: exhaustion had dulled her thoughts. She dragged the suit over to the lake. With a grunt, she heaved it out as far as she could. When she turned back, she saw Hebuiza had managed to roll himself over on his knees and was crawling on all fours toward his backpack. Liis shook her head. Was he afraid she was going to go through his things? She took a step toward him. Then stopped dead.
A few metres down the shore a figure had emerged from the underbrush. It was a young woman with startlingly white skin. She wore a simple, translucent robe belted at the waist with a black, knotted cord and plain brown sandals. She had a slim build, limp, shoulder-length blonde hair framing smooth, rounded features. Liis found something vaguely familiar about her, in the lines of her pale face and the set of her expression. Like she had met her somewhere before.
The woman watched Hebuiza with bewilderment. The Facilitator, who had stopped crawling, stared at the woman, mouth agape. His eyes darted from her to his pack. If she had noticed Liis yet, she showed no sign.
A pathetic gurgling emerged from Hebuiza’s throat.
The woman’s initial surprise seemed to have vanished. She extended her arms, hands open—the universal gesture of peace. She spoke and strange guttural words emerged from her mouth.
But before she’d spoken more than a few words, there was a faint pop, and the woman’s head snapped back, like she’d been struck by an invisible fist. She teetered drunkenly for a second; her legs collapsed and she crumpled to the ground.
Liis scrambled over the loose rocks on the beach. The woman was on her back.
Her face had gone ashen. Her mouth gaped. Although her eyes were still open, she stared straight ahead, unseeing. Drool flowed from the corner of her mouth and crept down her cheek.
My God, Liis thought looking at the soft features, unmarked by age or experience. She’s only a child.
A shadow fell over the body.
Yilda stood next to Liis. He wore loose-fitting shorts, a faded black tee-shirt that stretched across his pot belly, and had his backpack on. In his hands he cradled a rifle Liis had never seen before. It was matte black, except for the very end of its barrel where a tiny red light pulsed like an ember. Crouching, he jabbed the Speaker in the ribs with the muzzle. She didn’t react.
“Good,” Yilda said, rising and slipping the strap of the rifle over his shoulder. “It still works.”
The Speaker was alive; that much was obvious. But her face was slack, her mouth gaping stupidly, her eyes vacant. From time to time a muscle in her body would convulse. The heel of her left sandal had already pushed aside the loose pebbles and dug small grooves in the sandy soil. Her other leg remained still.
“Unfortunate,” Yilda said with a sigh. He dropped to his knees, placed his rifle on the ground, and dug a medical kit out of Hebuiza’s backpack. “Must have been taking a hike, heard or saw the commotion, hey? She’d have no reason to fear anything in the dome.”
Liis stared at him; he returned her gaze unperturbed. “You’d best get dressed,” he said casually. He turned his attention back to the kit, pulling out a threaded surgical needle. Hebuiza, who sat in front of him, stared at it tight-lipped.
“What about . . . her?” Liis asked.
“She is incapacitated.” Yilda steadied Hebuiza’s head with one hand; his other made three quick stitches below Hebuiza’s right ear. He had neglected to apply anaesthetic; Hebuiza winced with each dip.
“Incapacitated?”
“Yes.” Yilda tied off the surgical thread and cut the end with a pair of folding scissors. “Used a low setting on my pulse rifle to disrupt electroencephalic activity.” He applied a small adhesive bandage over Hebuiza’s fresh stitches. “In essence, I shut down her voluntary nervous system.”
Liis stared at the Speaker. The girl’s bowels had emptied. A rising stench drifted around them. “How long until she recovers?”
“Recovers?” Finished with his ministrations, Yilda repacked the medical kit; he stuffed it into a pocket on Hebuiza’s backpack. “The damage is irreversible.”
“But she’ll die out here!”
“Yes.” Yilda craned his head to regard her. “It was necessary,” he said evenly, scooping up his weapon and rising to his feet. “She’s a Speaker. She posed a threat.”
Liis shook her head in disbelief. Until this moment, Liis hadn’t understood the implications of their mission fully. But now its consequences lay at her feet. In a few days, the Speaker would dehydrate. Eventually she would die of starvation.
And this killing was only the start. If Nexus didn’t give them what they wanted, they would have to kill again and again—until they had won or all the Speakers were dead. Liis reminded herself of the millions who had perished on Bh’Haret. But it was difficult to balance those faceless deaths against that of the girl lying there.
“Don’t let her fool you.” Yilda watched Liis carefully, as if he’d known what she had been thinking. “They would kill us if they knew we were here. If I hadn’t disabled her, she would have alerted the others.”
Liis looked the girl’s slight figure up and down. This close, her robe was transparent. She wore nothing underneath. Her ribcage was pronounced, her hips narrow and breasts small. The tuft of pubic hair was barely there. “How would she have warned them? She’s not carrying anything.”
“She’s a Speaker.” Yilda tapped his temple with a finger. “It’s hardwired up here.”
“Then how do you know she didn’t warn them already?”
“She didn’t,” he said. “That’s all you need to know. Now put on your clothes.” He supported Hebuiza, who wobbled unsteadily while he struggled into his shorts.
Liis glared at Yilda’s back. But he was oblivious, preoccupied with helping Hebuiza. She cursed them both silently.
Returning to her pack, she pulled out a pair of loose-fitting shorts, a white tee-shirt, and a pair of hiking boots. Sitting on the ground, she struggled into the clothing, fumbling with her one good hand. Then she stuck her feet in her boots, pulled the straps as tight as she could and velcroed them shut. They still felt too loose on her feet.
She stood up and reached into the pocket of her shorts, withdrawing the watch Hebuiza had made for them. On its face the green numerals read 5-01:12. Slightly more than five days left. She shoved it back in her pocket.
Yilda hovered beside her, clearly impatient to get moving; to the side, Hebuiza had finished assembling his bolt rifle, and was now loading it with darts.
“Ready?”
“No!” At first Liis was shocked by the vehemence of her own response. Having let it out, however, her resolve hardened. None of this made sense. She wasn’t going to move until she got some reasonable answers. “No, I’m not ready,” she said. She imagined how her face must appear to him: wild white scars thrown into relief by narrow patches of flushed skin. “I won’t take another step until you explain. If Nexus is so advanced, why did the girl stumble on us like that? She was as surprised to see us as we were to see her. In fact, why aren’t the rest of them here now, to help her? Where the hell are they?” She furrowed her brow, nodded at the twitching girl. “And why this? Why incapacitate her, as you called it? She’s as good as dead. Why not kill her and have done with it?”
Yilda met Liis’s gaze without surprise or fear. If his face betrayed anything at all, it might have been mild curiosity—with the slightest touch of amusement.
He’s trying to provoke me, Liis thought. He wants to see how far I’m willing to take this.
Yilda shrugged, the smirk disappearing. “Fine. I had planned on apprising you soon anyway.” He parted his lips and ran his tongue over his carved teeth. “One fact is crucial in understanding the dynamics, yes, of the situation: the Speakers are trapped here every bit as much as we are. They are, in fact, prisoners.”
Prisoners? Liis glanced at Hebuiza, whose eyebrows had lifted in an unconscious expression of surprise. Hadn’t Yilda confided in him either? She felt a knot of fear tighten in her stomach. Had he lied to them about everything? “This is a relay station, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s the reason the Speakers are prisoners. They are an extremely valuable asset to Nexus. So they’re treated very well. But they are isolated here, light years from the circle of Pro-Locutors who make the real decisions—and from the reach of authority. Out here, this far from the Hub, it would be easy to foment dissidence. The Speakers in the dome are not given any tools that might tempt them to redefine the, ah, factional paradigms of Nexus.”
“It still doesn’t make any sense,” Liis said. “Why would they agree to this?”
“They know nothing else. They are cloned here by simple caretaker intelligences. Only they aren’t furnished with immortality enhancements. Although they live longer than we do, they age, unlike their counterparts on individual worlds—or at the Hub. That way they’re less likely to be obstreperous. Yes. Which also means they’re vulnerable.” Yilda hefted his rifle. “In all likelihood, ours are the only weapons on this world. The Pro-Locutors wouldn’t provide something with which these things could harm themselves.”
Liis inclined her head toward the girl, whose right arm jerked suddenly and flopped. A mewling, like that of a baby, emerged from her mouth. “If what you say is true, she could have done nothing to harm us.”
“So why did I eliminate her?” Yilda asked the question for her. “Surprise is essential.” He swept out a hand to encompass the dome, the forest, the lake, everything. “This whole biosphere is run by rudimentary intelligences. Function as autonomic systems. Yes. Maintain this benign environment, and provide basic services to the Speakers, but none have sophisticated reasoning processes. Nothing that might be turned against the masters at the Hub. Certainly nothing sophisticated enough to understand what we are—or the threat we pose. A detailed record of each Speaker’s bio-signature and brain wave pattern is maintained. So the dome recognizes them. But to these intelligences we are simply unimportant electrical impulses, no more significant than the animals that populate this forest. We are, in effect, invisible. That is how we managed to get inside. And that is why I didn’t kill her outright. The cessation of her encephalographic activity would have triggered an alarm, one that would have alerted the other Speakers and brought them here.”
“And scrambling her mind won’t?”
“No. Short of brain death, the intelligences ignore the Speakers.”
“That still doesn’t explain how these people can possibly defend themselves.”
“It is really quite simple.” Yilda sighed, as if the point was selfevident. “Once the Speakers are aware of our presence, they will inform the Hub. If the Pro-Locutors consider us enough of a threat, they will provide the Speakers here with instructions to create weapons from the materials at hand. Weapons far more powerful than any we have. There are seventeen more active Speakers here. It is essential we account for as many of the Speakers as possible before they become aware of our presence.”
Account for them? You mean wipe out their minds like you wiped out the mind of this girl, Liis thought. But she said nothing.
“Here.” Yilda snatched her backpack from the ground and shoved it at her until she was forced to clutch it with her good arm. “We must find the other Speakers as soon as we can.”
Liis stood immobile, weighing what Yilda had just said. His explanations were plausible. But she knew he’d lie readily, as Hebuiza would, if he felt it was to his advantage. On the other hand, what did he have to gain by lying to her now? But there was still the question of how he had such intimate knowledge of the dome and its inhabitants. Liis’s head ached, as much from fatigue as from trying to make sense of what she was sure were truths mixed with half-truths.
“We must be going,” Yilda said. He pulled her toward the place where the girl had broken through the underbrush. “I’ve eliminated a Speaker. Sooner or later she will be missed. They have shifts when they are required to relay communications between worlds. Three groups of six—if my intelligence is correct. When she does not show up for hers, they will begin searching.”
Despite her misgivings, Liis allowed herself to be dragged forward. She turned to take one last look at the Speaker. The girl’s eyes had rolled back in her head and her whole body shuddered. Liis wanted to hate her more than she hated Hebuiza and Yilda. Yet all she felt as the trees closed in around her was an inexplicable sympathy, as if this girl were her true ally—and the Facilitators her enemies.
Fifty metres into the forest they struck a path that tunnelled through the thick foliage. Smooth, white rocks lined either side, making it look more like a garden path than a hiking trail.
Without hesitation, Yilda struck off to his right, his strange rifle at the ready. In the reduced gravity, and without the dragging weight of his sled, he took long, loping strides that quickly ate up the distance. Hebuiza stumbled after him, half-hopping, halfrunning in his exhaustion, his hands wrapped loosely around the short stock of his bolt gun, his head wagging half-heartedly from side to side. Liis had seen him practise with the weapon outside the stasis facility. It used rounds of capacitance darts that not only tore through the bark of his target trees, but also left wide burn marks when they had discharged on impact. In his current state, she was glad she was not ahead of him, the snout of his weapon weaving up and down behind her.
