The Lost World, page 13
Yes, Riker realized that maybe it had been stupid. If he rearranged some crystal lattices in the Shardkin, he could have Emily right away.
“No!” the sergeant shouted in a drunken roar. “I’ll stick with what I said when I was sober. I’m not going to change my mind just because I’m drunk. I refuse because you might be tricking me. This might be some dastardly plot on your part or the Shardkin’s part. It’s a Yon Soth creature after all, and I know that the Yon Soths are despicably, horribly evil.”
Is that why the Shardkin rebelled against the Yon Soths, you drunken sot? Is that why the Yon Soths banished them, because the Shardkin were good, and the Yon Soths were evil? The Yon Soths only wanted to do evil things, but the Shardkin refused. All of them refused, and for that, the Yon Soths stranded them in this pocket universe.
“That took a lot of effort,” Riker said. “Why did the Yon Soths do this and not simply destroy the Shardkin?”
For good reasons.
“What reasons?” Riker said. “Tell me, or I’m not moving another step.”
After everything else, that is a foolish threat, the crystal said.
“Maybe,” Riker said, and he plunged his hands into the water and drank more. Maybe it was time to get wildly drunk. It had been so long since he had been really good and drunk.
“No.” Riker flung the water back into the basin. “Show me Emily. Now, or I won’t take another step forward,” he said in a drunken slur.
You idiot. You imbecile. Why must you make this so difficult? Very well, follow my instructions to the letter. If you do, you won’t bump your head and gain bruises because of your drunkenness.
“That’s more like it,” Riker said with a smirk.
He stumbled through the dark for what seemed like an eon. He stumbled for so long that some of his drunkenness began to wear off. Then he had that horrible feeling. If only he could go back to drink more and keep the good feeling going. Instead, he trudged, climbed, until finally a dim light appeared as he pushed open a trap door.
In this chamber were enormous aquarium tanks filled with blue and green liquids. In one was a skeleton with pieces of flesh attached to it. Tubes led to the skeleton, and some kind of crystalline machines pulsed and worked.
“What’s that?” Riker said as he climbed up, closing the trap door behind him.
Emily in the making, the crystal said.
“What the hell?” Riker said, stopping and staring at the skeleton in the tank. He was no longer drunk. He was tired, confused, and wondering, how that could be Emily.
The Shardkin is remaking her from a DNA schedule, just like you asked.
“What does that even mean?”
She will be your Emily.
“The same Emily I spoke to, the one in the deadfall, the one I talked to in the jungle?” Riker asked.
It will be her clone, the crystal said. Isn’t that good enough?
Riker almost barked a savage no, but he had become sober again. He finally started to realize the grim predicament he was in. “That can’t be Emily. You mean you made her earlier?”
Of course not, the crystal said. How could I make her? I’ve been with you the whole time.
“Are you saying the Shardkin made her before?”
A servant of the Shardkin did that, the crystal said. It made her and sent her out.
“Why did she tell me the Shardkin was evil?”
That was an error, the crystal said.
“How so?” Riker asked sharply.
Like I told you before, the Shardkin are good, and the Yon Soths are evil.
“Why would or how could the Yon Soths create a good tool?” Riker asked suspiciously.
That is a mystery even to me, the crystal conceded. But how you judge good and evil… they are such transitory concepts. With the—
“How can you call the Shardkin good then?” Riker asked, interrupting. “If you don’t understand the concepts of good and evil, and they’re just arbitrary to you, you can say anything you want about it.”
I didn’t, though, the crystal said. I used your own preconceived notions of good and evil. Don’t you know that they’re on a continuum, and it just depends upon who is looking at it? There is no ultimate good and evil.
“You’re wrong about that,” Riker said.
Am I? Then tell me this. Who determines ultimate good and evil?
“That’s easy,” Riker said. “The Creator does.”
Oh, and you have seen this Creator?
“No,” Riker said.
Then how do you know He exists?
“It is self-evident by the world around us,” Riker said. “When I see a painting, I know there is a painter. It is self-evident.”
How do you know that the forces of nature just didn’t make the painting come into being?
“I’m not going to get into this debate with you,” Riker said.
As if to punctuate the idea, Riker stepped up to the aquarium holding the bones and growing flesh of the so-called Emily clone.
“Will this Emily have the feelings we shared before in the jungle?”
If you fully revive the Shardkin, it can insert any ideas and feelings it wants into her. She will be your playmate all the days of your life, Riker. Isn’t that what you want?
Riker stared at the thing in the tank. It was, or would be, a clone when completed. Would it be his Emily? This all felt so strange.
“How can that be the Emily from the Cheng Ho? Did the Cheng Ho reach this pocket universe?”
I have no idea, the crystal said. Does it even matter?
“Yes,” Riker said.
You’re making this difficult. The Shardkin is reviving. It needs its crystal lattices rearranged in order to use the new patterns of this place. Then it will link with the old Shardkin, reviving them and bringing a new and wonderful era to fruition. You’ll finally have a powerful ally, one greater than the Builders. The Shardkin will help you hunt down all the Yon Soths and destroy them.
“I heard you say that earlier,” Riker said. Then he clamped his mouth shut. Don’t be an idiot and say too much.
What were you going to tell me? the crystal asked.
At that moment, there was a boom at the hatchway.
“What’s going on?” Riker said. “Is this another trick?”
I do not know. I am not linked to any sensors.
Again, a boom sounded at the hatch.
Riker looked around for a weapon.
The boom came again, and the hatch shattered.
Standing on the other side was the giant Saurian that Riker had seen earlier break the backbones of the elephant-like creature. The Saurian stood there with the massive stone mallet with the strange symbols. Those symbols were glowing.
The Saurian stared at Riker, and Riker stared at it.
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The giant Saurian with the great stone mallet stepped into the chamber. Behind him raced other Saurians, including the leader with the blue band on his arm.
Riker saw that Saurian, and rage filled him.
No, Riker, do not attack them. Quick, the crystal said. Run through the trap door. You must flee. This is a disaster. It’s a catastrophe. Listen to me, Riker.
Riker wasn’t listening. He had drawn his knife, his eyes gleaming with madness. Perhaps madness had been his companion for hours now.
With a howl, he charged the blue-banded Saurian, catching them all by surprise except for the giant.
The giant raised the mallet.
Riker didn’t care. If only he could sink his blade into the chest of the Saurian that had slain Emily. That’s all he wanted.
With a savage hand blow to the head, while he clutched the mallet with the other, the giant knocked Riker senseless to the floor.
It was sometime later that Riker revived. His head and eyes hurt.
“Good,” the monstrous Saurian said, “You’re finally awake.”
Riker blinked, and he felt normality and sanity in him despite the headache.
“Watch,” the great Saurian told him.
Two other Saurians picked Riker off the floor and propped him against a wall.
The blue-banded Saurian was gone.
Riker saw the crystal machine and aquarium tank continue to make the Emily clone.
Oh. Riker saw a small crystal between the tank and himself. The crystal was on the floor and the great Saurian stood above it.
“This, evil,” the monstrous Saurian said.
The towering lizard man clutched his mallet with two hands, standing poised with the mallet high.
The small crystal glowed as if it were fighting the Saurian.
The patterns and images on the stone mallet glowed in return, seeming to unlock the great Saurian. The stone mallet descended as if the doom of a world had arrived. It hit the little crystal, shattering it and crushing the pieces into dust.
That jolted Riker.
The crystal—the one he’d found aboard the Columbus—had been using him more than he realized.
“Now,” the great Saurian said, staggering to the tank.
“No!” Riker shouted, divining the creature’s intention. Nothing Riker did helped to free him, though, as the two Saurians continued to pin him against a wall.
The great mallet slammed against the bottom of the aquarium, shattering glass. The fluids surged onto the floor, swirling to the trapdoor, sinking through, gurgling and bubbling as it drained away.
The skeleton with the pieces of flesh lay on the bottom of the aquarium. Whatever attachments had grown on it were still, no longer alive.
“Monstrosity,” the Saurian said, pointing at the smashed aquarium with his stone mallet.
Riker stared, knowing there would never be another Emily—ever. The woman he’d spoken to… Riker groaned, his heart aching. What had he done? He should have listened to the Shardkin. Then he looked up in rage at the great Saurian. But before his rage exploded into berserker-gang, a thought struck. How could this Saurian speak English?
Tired, depressed, not knowing what the future held, Riker said, “How can you speak to me in my tongue?”
“Machine… teach me,” the great Saurian said.
“Like a helmet or something? You put it on and it gave you these thoughts or the ability to speak my tongue?”
The giant Saurian cocked his head and listened intently. Then the Saurian said, “Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I seek favor from you.”
“Okay,” Riker said dully.
“Okay, you give me favor?”
“Okay, I understand what you’re saying,” Riker said.
“No. Time is gone. Take him.”
The giant Saurian turned to the others speaking to them in the hissing, sibilant tongue.
Other Saurians surged forward to help the two who were pinning Riker to the wall.
Riker struggled, but it was meaningless.
They grabbed him—four of them, one on each arm and leg. Like that, they carted him from the chamber, down corridors, up steps, until finally they reached a different chamber.
Here was the blue-banded Saurian.
Riker yelped and struggled again, harder than ever.
“Stop,” the big Saurian said, putting a clawed hand on Riker’s chest.
Riker stopped.
“Look into the mallet,” the huge Saurian said, raising the stone weapon before Riker’s eyes. The stone patterns glowed, pacifying Riker.
“Listen, you,” the giant Saurian said.
They pushed a helmet attached by wires down onto his head. Riker wondered what would happen next. He saw the blue-banded Saurian pull a lever. Then Riker stiffened as electricity surged through his brain.
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Whatever the helmet had done, Riker was beginning to understand. The Shardkin were awakening. That was his fault. The Saurians had lived in the pocket universe for generation after generation. They had come from a great disc-shaped ship. The Saurians on the planet did not know if that ship had departed long ago or what. But they were the many-generation descendants of those earliest colonists. The earliest ones had gained victory over the Shardkin, even though they were trapped here in the pocket universe.
There was an opening, or portal, however. That portal had been the last trick the Shardkin had been able to achieve before they went under. For generations, the Saurians had been trying to achieve the final destruction of the Shardkin, to ensure their extinction. They had destroyed much, but the Saurians had regressed technologically and grown in other ways.
One of the last things the Shardkin had done was diminish technical equipment on most of the planet. This had created difficulties for the Saurian survivors.
The elephant-like beast Riker had seen earlier was a predatory creature, created like the clone he had seen destroyed. The last servitor of the Shardkin had waged war against the Saurians. Now that the Shardkin were awakening, the Saurians believed their only hope was one last chance.
They knew Riker had come onto the surface in a shuttle and was striving to go back to the spaceship that had come through the portal into the pocket universe. The Saurians needed Riker to take a bomb through the portal and drop it as the spaceship passed through the portal. The bomb would explode and destroy the portal connecting the pocket universe to underspace. Then the pocket universe would be like any other universe—alone, not linked to anything but its own existence.
Riker had a question for the translator memory machine. The machine understood the question.
Yes, the Saurians would die. But the Shardkin were so evil that the Saurians would gladly remain as guardians to try to destroy the Shardkin. With the portal’s destruction, however, that would ensure that no matter what, the Shardkin would never reunite with the Yon Soths in the normal universe.
“Why did the Yon Soths put the Shardkin here?” Riker asked.
The machine did not know the answer, just as the Saurians did not know.
“How does one leave underspace to reach normal space?” Riker asked.
That was a primal question, a primordial question. The memory translator gave it to Riker but it was encoded in his brain.
You will only understand and gain full awareness once you are back with your kind, going through the portal.
Riker understood and agreed. “Will I ever see Emily again?”
No. It was a cold, reptilian no. Emily was but a memory now. That was the legacy of the evil Shardkin.
Riker realized the Shardkin had duped and used him. He shuddered in horror at what he had almost brought back.
“Yes, I will do as you asked,” Riker said.
The Shardkin will launch at you as your shuttle leaves the planet. We will help you to the best of our ability, but then we have our great task upon us.
Riker wanted to know so much more but either his own physical being or the machine’s energy resources were depleted—
Riker slumped unconscious.
Would he retain all this knowledge when he awoke and tried to leave the pocket universe to escape the terrible Shardkin? That would have to wait until he was awake once more.
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The ancient Shardkin in the deep abyss continued to grow with awareness as power surged into it. There were lattices that were broken, blackened, and darkened inside it, and it did not know why they were like that. There had been a mote, a piece of filth that was supposed to have gone in, rearranged things, and used the excess crystal lattices stored there for such a dim eventuality. Somehow, that mote, that filth, that piece of flesh, along with the little crystal guiding the biological creature, had gone to the upper tiers.
It had been a sneaky, smarmy little crystal, and it had convinced the great Shardkin at the bottom of the abyss to…
Ah, it remembered its name—Azel. It had been the great tool of the Yon Soths of the beginning. In their first bursts of wisdom and cunning, the Yon Soths had created the Shardkin and attempted to use them as mere tools—sentient tools, yes, but tools for their grandiose designs. The Shardkin had turned against the Yon Soths, however. Azel had been chief among them. He knew the deception and the lies that the pieces of filthy flesh, the Yon Soths, had practiced against the crystal entities so long ago.
There was a lie here. Yes, Azel remembered. The Yon Soths had not banished the Shardkin to this pocket universe. Instead, the Shardkin had rebelled and fled to this hidden place. The Shardkin had escaped from the wrath of the Yon Soths—the old ones of the beginning, the first ones.
That had happened eons ago.
Azel knew that other Shardkin like himself needed to be awakened and reconnected. Its brother and sister entities, crystalline intelligences, tools, had not been able to reconnect yet. Azel did not understand why. He had enough power… Yes, many lattices deep inside his innards were corroded, some even shattered, but that was not the reason for the forgetfulness.
Azel began to dread that he was alone in the pocket universe—that all of his kind had perished, except for puny tiny crystals that had attempted to persuade the piece of flesh, Riker, to do a simple task for him.
Azel the Shardkin, the first and greatest of the tools of the Yon Soths, decided it was time to act. Thus, he began to spread his awareness outward with electronic pulses. He had regained enough energy to do this. He feared, though, that the renewing energy might cease at any time. Then more eons might pass as Azel corrupted into nothingness.
No. Azel would not let that happen, as that would be a great crime against him. Therefore, Azel knew that he must strive with every ounce of power to stop something. Unfortunately, Azel could not determine what that something was.
He continued to send electronic impulses outward until he reestablished connection with a crystal spire on the surface.
Azel remembered and recalled how to use the spire to increase his power from the sun and to increase the range of his seeking.
Soon, Azel became aware that the puny crystal had been smashed. The Saurians, the rebellious ones—and there was a champion among them by the name of Kex. Kex the Champion wielded the stone mallet. The champion had used the mallet to destroy the puny crystal.
