Far Frontiers Part 22

"Would you call that an invitation?" he asked as the Technalien rejoined them.

While they'd explored the Leviathan, an arching entrance had opened in the nearest cube.

The azure luminance that poured out suggested a corridor beyond. There was no hint of a door or a gate. There was just an opening where none had been before.

They crossed the short distance to the portal. At North's direction, they stopped again. His reflection looked darkly back at him from the cube's smooth surface. He paused, taken aback by his own image, all leather and sunburn, small scar along his stubbled jaw-line, face lean and rough and tracked from too many battles, too many tempestuous years among dangerous stars.

He hated the loneliness he saw on that face, and he despised the ruthlessness. But it was his eyes that sent a shock through him, gray and wary, cold as ice- killer's eyes. He put a fingertip to the image, then stopped as if afraid to examine too closely what he had become. He looked down at Katrin, who stood too close, her shoulder lightly brushing his arm. A tremor ran through him as her gaze turned up to meet his, not a tremor of fear, but of something more dangerous to him. For a brief moment he wondered if a woman like this could possibly save him from himself, from what he had become.

Deserter~ she had called him. She didn't know it all.

Yoru touched the wall with his bare left arm. The circuitry that veined his skin coruscated with energy.

North pushed aside his inner demons and turned his mind back to business. "Crystalline?"

"Silicon," the Technalien specified. Maintaining contact with the wall, he closed his eyes.

"Old," he added. He opened his eyes again. "It defies accurate dating."

The partners looked at each other, wordless, tense.

Katrin said what they dared not. "The Alphans?"

The Alphans. The First Ones.

Only a few ruins of that nearly mythical, first star-faring race had ever been discovered,most notably on Fenris in the Capella system. Also, half a galaxy away at McNaughton's Refuge.

And only a few guesses had been made about their strange technologies. Where they came from or where they went, what they called themselves, what they looked like, no one knew.

But now-the door was open, a light was on.

Yoru ran his hand along the opening. "Traces of human DNA here," he reported. "As if someone brushed..."

"Annin!" Katrin breathed. She slipped under the Technalien's arm and rushed inside. Her footsteps rang on the strange floor as she raced down the corridor in the weird blue light.

"d.a.m.n it!" North cursed. "Katrin!" He plunged across the threshold after her with Yoru right behind. But Katrin stopped, then turned to face him. Her trembling image reflected and fractured in the thousands of crystalline facets that composed the walls on either side of her, on the gla.s.sine ceiling above her head, in the polished smoothness of the floor where she stood. A hail of mirrors and micromirrors. She jerked her gun from image to image.

To her credit, she never fired it.

Reaching her side, North helped her to holster the weapon, then at a more cautious pace, they proceeded together. He kept a tight grip on Katrin's hand to prevent her from running off again, or so he told himself. He, too, found the multiple images disconcerting. He didn't draw his own pistol, but his hand never strayed from its b.u.t.t.

Down the long corridor they went and into another that sloped downward at a gentle angle through a tunneled archway. They emerged on a railed balcony overlooking a vast atrium-or perhaps it was a pit- whose shuddering blackness yielded not at all to the tunnel's weak blue light. They paused to stare, to wonder, to fear.

North reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and extracted a match. The tiny fire flared. No ceiling, nor floor could they see on the other side of that rail. A moment of vertigo seized him, and he dropped the match. It fell like a miniature comet into the dark, sizzling, winking out, revealing nothing.

At the farther end of the balcony another corridor waited, beckoning with the same sourceless light as the first. Doors lined this new corridor, dozens of doors on either side. North and Katrin listened for any hint of sound behind them, for any presence. Yoru, scanned and a.n.a.lyzed, his sensors augmenting hearing and eyesight. There were no k.n.o.bs, no handles, no obvious means to activate whatever mechanism opened those doors, so they moved on withincreasing wariness.

Through more corridors they wandered, up spiraled staircases, down short ramps so smooth and sharply sloped they slid on their boot soles. On another balcony above yet another atrium they stopped again. A pattering of droplets struck the railing, and a soft, cool mist kissed their faces.

"Rain!" North whispered.

Katrin touched his arm nervously. "Inside? What power...

No point in finishing the question. North struck his final match and sheltered the timid flame with a cupped hand. It showed them nothing that made sense. He felt, though, as he shook out the match and dropped it, a growing oppressive fear, and the weight of some ponderous eye upon him, measuring their advance. He saw the same fear on Katrin's face and read it in his partner's uncharacteristic silence.

They encountered the first intersecting corridor. North could no longer be certain of direction, if they were above sea-level or below it. He was certain only, by some primitive instinct or intuition, that someone was with them, near them. He could feel some invisible breath upon his neck, some hand unseen descending toward his shoulder. The hairs on his nape stood on end.

Yoru turned slowly, peering down the crossroads into each new corridor. He had apparently ceased his a.n.a.lyses and scans, and on his face he wore a look of fear that North had never seen before.

"Tis now the very witching time of night," Yoru whispered, "when churchyards yawn and h.e.l.l itself breathes out contagion to this world."

North bit his lip and strained to think through the cold, unreasoning dread that filled his mind. Which way to go? Three new corridors. Three of them. When shall we three meet again?

The thought tingled through his brain, but he dismissed it. He would not split up their party.

"This way," he said, choosing the rightward corridor.

An unexpected sound stopped them.

A slow, metallic tread echoing from behind, caused them to turn. A shadow where none should be in such diffuse light loomed around an unseen twist in yet an-other corridor. A shape attenuated, black and terrible, steadily advanced. Then it, too, stopped.

There was about it some hint of humanness.Katrin, freeing her hand from North's, took a step toward it. "Annin?" The word left her mouth a bare gasp. Louder, she called, "Annin?" Then forgetting her companions, she ran forward.

North shot out a hand too late to stop her. With a curse, he drew his laser pistol and sped after her, his heels ringing on the crystalline floor. Ahead, Katrin stopped, freezing as if in mid- step, arms limp at her sides.

North's natural caution rea.s.serted itself. Mouth dry, nerves screaming, he gripped his pistol in both hands and crept the remaining paces to Katrin's side.

The shadow had resolved itself. A second woman stood unspeaking in the corridor's dim glow. Wide-eyed, North stared, then blinked suddenly as if stabbed by some splinter in the eye.

He looked again, tentatively shielding his gaze as if he faced the brightest light.

'What's happened to you?" Katrin cried over and over, horror on her face, tears washing her cheeks. "Annin, what's happened to you? What's happened?"

North forced himself to look. If his retinas melted, he had to look.

Annin might have been Katrins twin, yet there was about her an intangible, untouchable something! She wore a beauty that made her sister drab and plain. Coppery hair like Katrin's shone with measureless l.u.s.ter, a fire, that framed a flawless face and violet eyes. The simple turning of her head sang with a grace of movement that made his senses ache, and the stab of her gaze filled him with rapture. Hers was a mad, mind-stealing beauty, an essential yet utterly alien purity, irresistibly strange, violent in its perfection.

North ripped his gaze away. The image of Annin burned behind his lids. He sucked in ragged breaths, fighting a raging impulse to raise his laser pistol, to pull the trigger and destroy impossible loveliness be-fore it choked and consumed him.

Weeping, Katrin stretched out a tentative hand to touch her sister, her only family. Annin, too, stretched out her hand and smiled. Yet, before their fingers touched, Katrin hesitated, doubtful, afraid.

Interlacing her fingers with Katrin's, Annin spoke, her voice musical, as unnaturally lovely as her form. "Put aside your fears," she said. "I am well, Sister, and sent to guide you."

"Sent?" North caught Katrin's other hand. "By whom?"

Annin smiled. North's brain rocked beneath a wave of fierce desire. "Come," she urged, releasing Katrin's hand. "It's not far!" She turned, glided away in a delicate, poetic motion, longlimbs in a white drapery, small golden sandals ringing.

North cried inside to possess her and followed, unable to do anything else. Beside him came Katrin, weeping, muttering as if driven mad, "What's happened to her? What's happened?"

Up a sloping pa.s.sage they went, down a spiral stair, through another corridor lined with doors. Yet another balcony, and another atrium, but here, in the solid blackness, North glimpsed a shape, a towering tubelike thing leaning on huge gears that might have been a telescope had a human mind conceived it. He couldn't be sure, nor could he even turn his head for a longer look, for Annin continued on, and he followed like a puppet where she led.

Ahead, another figure greeted them, a man this time, like Annin perfect of face and body, his beauty evolved beyond anything naturally human. North felt Katrin tremble, her knees weaken; he caught her, wrapping one arm around her waist as he struggled to avert his gaze. How was it possible? This man outshone Annin!

"Keller!" came Katrin's terrified whisper. "Kitaro Keller!"

The corridor ended. Into a vast, domed chamber they emerged. The air turned cooler, drying the sweat that had beaded on North's face and throat. How different this chamber was from the nearly featureless comdors through which they had wandered. Spires of polished silica, carefully shaped, rose from the floor. Crystalline cubes, some taller than North, squatted seemingly at random about the room. Within those dark structures North glimpsed shapes, objects of mysterious form. Machines, he realized suddenly with that instinct or intuition upon which he so often relied.

Katrin screamed and fell back, clapping her hands to her mouth. With fear-widened eyes, she stared at a rising column of gleaming gla.s.s. Within, the nude form of a young woman, eyes closed in slumber.

Moment to moment, from one heartbeat to the next, that sleeping form changed in subtle and inexpressible ways as they watched. In identical spires, the rest of Annin's crew, men and women, underwent their own metamorphoses, achieving inside their strange coc.o.o.ns measureless and mind-wrenching perfection, beauty beyond the divine, intolerable to behold.

North flung his arms around Katrin, shamed to discover the long scream that filled his ears was his own. She buried her face against his chest, shaking, blood running from the corners of her eyes.

The horror that North had earlier felt in the corridor returned, chilling him, raising thehairs on his neck. As before, he felt a ponderous gaze upon his back. Whipping his laser pistol up, he whirled.

Annin blocked his aim, placing her milky breast almost against the lens of his weapon.

The shock of her beauty paralyzed his finger on the trigger. Yet, beyond her, high on the tallest cube in the farthest, most shadowed corner of the chamber, was another form cloaked in black folds of heavy cloth, hooded, without visible feature, shapeless beneath its garment.

Alien!

All his wandering among the stars, the battles, the missions, the running from authorities, all his secrets and all the secret places he'd been-and at last, that word had meaning! Waves of sheer otherness radiated from that form, uun-naturalness, a life energy utterly in-compatible with his own.

Kitaro Keller climbed onto another cube. Lines of force flared within the cube as he mounted it. Without quite knowing how he knew, North felt sure it was Kitaro's own coc.o.o.n, the instrument of his change.

Keller struck a pose of inhuman grace. "Master your fear, Colonel North," he said.

"Kalrin, be calm. What each of you sense is strangeness, but not evil."

"You sabotaged the Leviathan!" Katrin answered, mustering her courage. "What have you done to Annin!"

"Don't be angry with Kitaro," Annin said. "The Leviathan is unimportant. I've undergone an elevation."

North declined to lower his pistol. "How do you know my name?"

Kitaro Keller looked apologetic; heartrending beauty, almost an innocence, shaped his expression. "Katrin should have mentioned," he said, "I'm a mind-walker, hired into Annin's crew to facilitate commumcation with other species. This machine," he gestured to the coruscating cube upon which he stood, "has amplified all my potentials, including my once- meager psionic talents. I see all your thoughts, Colonel." His gaze locked with North's as he added, "All your secrets." He turned and lifted a hand toward the alien, who stood silently watching from within its black cloak. "So does our host."

Katrin pushed free of North's embrace as anger overcame her fear. "You hijacked my ship, d.a.m.n you! You've endangered my sister!"

"Days ago, I heard its mind-call," Keller said, gesturing again to the alien, "like music inmy head, like a symphony, irresistible."

Katrin was not mollified. "It told you to kidnap Annin? The entire crew? You anesthetized them!"

The alien stirred. No, shivered. A wave of indecipherable thought flowed from it, striking North like a rushing flood. Yet there was something in it of confusion, discomfort, longing.

"It needed us," Keller answered.

"0 brave new world that hath such people in it," Yoru said. North risked another glance over his shoulder. Half-drowned in wonder and concerned for KaInn, he had forgotten his partner.

"I know another quote," Katnin said, her tone dangerous. "Oh, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side."

The Technalien ignored her. "Is it an Alphan?"

Annin shook her head. "No, though our host has adapted these Alphan machines to its own purpose. It is a stranger newly come to our galaxy."

"It finds us unbearably ugly," Keller explained. He tapped his temple. "It shrieks just to look upon us."

'That black cloak hides beauty to the nth degree," Annin said as she moved to the spires wherein her fellow crew members slept like caterpillars awaiting wings. "Beauty that would blind and drive us mad. But there is hope for a meeting of our two races." She placed one hand over her heart while indicating Kitaro with the other. "We are steps in a ladder, each of us changing as our host studies the capabilities of these machines and the capacities of our bodies. It seeks to create in us a bridge between its race and ours." She reached out to Katrin again. 'This is a great thing, Sister. I'm pleased to play a part."

Katrin whirled away, shielding her eyes as she screamed at Annin. "It's tampered with your mind! This isn't you talking!"

Annin smiled with a sadness that sent daggers through North's heart. "You don't understand, little one," she said. "But you can." She ran her hand over one of the occupied spires.

"You can be a part of this, too."

Katrin drew her charge pistol and aimed it at the alien. "I came to rescue you, Annin! I'm not leaving you here with that thingr'

In the shadows, the alien recoiled. Another wave of confusion radiated from it, andsomething more that shocked North. It feared! And he realized that humans truly were as incomprehensibly alien to it as it was to them! He shot out a hand, pushing Katrin's gun down- ward.

Without warning, a laser bolt flashed past his face. Simultaneously, a second beam lanced upward at the alien shape. A thunderous charge-blast filled the chamber. Crystal exploded.

Someone screamed.

Yoru knocked North to the floor as a Line of Laser bolts tore through the s.p.a.ce above his head. Stunned by the impact, North stammered, "No."

A feral roar filled the chamber. A pair of Tauran Warhounds ran at them. Another pair emerged from the corridor.

G.o.dlike upon his cube, Kitaro Keller flung out his arms and poured all his psionic strength into a desperate, horrified command. "Stop!"

The effect hit North like a hammer. The Warhounds howled with pain and clutched their s.h.a.ggy skulls, but the rearmost raised his gun, and though staggered, fired. Keller's chest exploded.

A numbing loss filled North, then rage. Fantastic beauty-callously destroyed! He rose from the floor, pistol in hand, and leaped atop the nearest cube. Dodging fire, he sighted on the murderous War Hound who had killed Keller, then fired one long beam-generating burn.

Screaming, he held the trigger, and scythed the beam into a second War Hound. Like a madman, he continued firing, cutting them both into pieces until his pistol's energy drained away.

"Ryder?" Yoru looked up at him. "It's over. Come down.

A red fog lifted from North's senses. He looked around. The other Warhounds lay dead from charge fire. Katrin's work. He looked past Yoru for her.

She lay sprawled near one of the spires, her right side torn open. Annin, like some angel, cradled her sister. North leaped down, ran to her, and knelt.

"Katrin!" he whispered.

She roiled her eyes toward him, and through her pain, smiled weakly. "All leather," she murmured, reaching weakly to touch his face, "and sunburn." She hesitated, wincing, lip trembling. "What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side?" She stared at him, and her hand slipped away. "I remember a kiss...

He watched the life leave her eyes, and another piece of him died with her.Annin looked up to the far corner of the chamber. "Our host has fled. I felt his repulsion at our capacity for violence." She looked at North, and he flinched from the intensity of her gaze.

"For just an instant I glimpsed its form-I couldn't bear it, Ryder North."