Codgerspace, p.26
Codgerspace, page 26
She climbed shakily to her feet. “I sympathize. I’m having trouble believing that it can be found in anything so huge.”
“Intriguing. We share a common disbelief.” The skull heaved back and tentacles worked the instrumentation on its chest. “I must take up my station.” It took a giant, four-legged stride toward the portal.
She rushed to the edge of the platform and found herself confronting a sheer ten-meter drop. “Wait!” The alien paused, the head twisting ‘round on the multiple neck to gaze back at her.
Did I say that? she wondered. “Don’t leave me up here. I can’t get down.”
The single flap of leathery skin that curved above the four eyes drooped slightly. It was an unsettlingly human gesture.
“Why shouldn’t I leave you there?”
“Because … well, because if not for our presence on board your ship you’d still be asleep, or in forced estivation, or whatever your suspension process involves.”
“No. Only the approach of the enemy would result in my rejuvenation. I am awake and conscious again because the ship needs me.”
“Well … maybe I can help you.”
The Drex boomed. “How could anything so insignificant be of assistance to me in any forthcoming action?”
“That’s something you’ll have to find out. Does it make sense to turn your, uh, dorsal side on possibilities involving unevaluated potential? Besides, after a million years asleep I’d think you’d be glad of another being to talk to, size notwithstanding.”
The alien was silent. She forced herself to remain motionless as it returned to the side of the platform, and not to scream when a tentacle as thick as a conduit again plucked her into the air. It might have been her imagination but it felt as if the grip was more cautious this time.
The tentacle placed her halfway down the length of the matching limb directly before it. She staggered atop the scaly surface, sat down quickly. The floor seemed very far away. If she slipped off … But the limb was amazingly steady and she was soon straddling the rubbery surface. It was like riding a giant snake.
The view as the Drex turned and headed for the exit was spectacular.
Vast stretches of corridor that had taken her minutes to cross were traversed in seconds. Despite its long sleep, the alien acted as if it knew exactly where it was going. Beneath the four massive pillars which served it as legs the deck still glowed with rose-hued light. The Autothor led the way, effortlessly maintaining its position near the tip of one tentacle.
Bouncing slightly on the half-extended tentacle, she turned to peer back up at the Drex. “Are you the only one left aboard?”
“Unless another was added after I was placed in hiatus,” the alien rumbled. “Something went wrong. I was not supposed to sleep so long.” One eye inclined toward her while the other three focused on the corridor ahead. “For such a small life-form you are overfull with questions.”
“I can’t help it. It’s our nature. How do you feel?”
“In what spirit is the inquiry made?”
“Honest curiosity.”
The Drex considered. “Lousy. How would you feel?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it. I get cramps if I sleep more than seven hours.”
“Personal reference. The Autothor informed me that you are a self-centered species. Believing that you were the only form of intelligent life in the universe. An appalling conceit reflective of a nominal intelligence.”
“Don’t blame me. It isn’t as if we didn’t look around. Where is your home located in reference to Earth anyway?”
“Astonishingly distant. I have much to do. You were correct: I find you amusing.”
“Glad to hear it,” she replied fervently. It was not pleasant to contemplate what the result would have been had the Drex found her otherwise. “Are you some kind of ship’s caretaker or something?”
“I am not a caretaker.”
“What, then?”
“I would be properly identified as the Supreme Flail of the All-powerful Annihilation.”
That didn’t sound very reassuring, she reflected.
“I fear I have overslept.”
“For a million years?”
The great curving skull bobbed to one side, like a drunken ski-jump. “The alarm didn’t go off. What do you want from me? You think I’m happy about it? My friends, my shipmates, my mating partners: all gone, swallowed by the bottomless vortex of time.” Three cablelike tentacles writhed in a complex gesture of accentuation.
“I awaken to a ship operational but lifeless save for a bunch of quarreling parasites, and with an emergency to deal with.”
“Emergency?”
“You are not aware that an advance force of approximately one thousand unidentified vessels is approaching this system?”
“Uh, no.” She glared accusingly at the Autothor, which of course ignored her.
“This enemy of yours,” she wondered, “what are they like? Besides the fact that they have an obvious ability to build lots of ships.”
“If offered the opportunity to confront them in person, you would choose instead to luxuriate in my company.”
“That bad,” she murmured worriedly.
“As to physical appearance, you don’t want to know.”
“I guess not. How are you going to fight so many ships all by yourself?”
“I am not prepared to discuss my tactical decisions with a parasite.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that. I’ll live with ‘insignificant,’ but ‘parasite’ is pretty hard to take. We’re not taking anything from you.”
“You exhibit the admirable courage of the blissfully ignorant. I choose to comply.” There was a definite mocking undertone to the translation of the Drex’s response.
“Thanks. You know, you could help me halt an injustice.”
“As a representative of a new species I find you marginally interesting. I have no interest in your infinitesimally insignificant problems.”
“You’ll find my companions interesting too.”
“That is highly unlikely. Do not think to play upon my casual interest in your kind to achieve some nebulous aim of your own. You do not want to upset me. I am larger than you, infinitely stronger, more intelligent, and besides, I am in a bad mood.”
She started to reply, then decided it would be expedient to shut up for a while.
It was a wise decision.
XX
It seemed to Ashili that they took a roundabout way to return to the observation chamber, but eventually she began to recognize highlights of the corridor which led to the room she had left not so very long ago. Everything looked different from her mobile vantage point fifteen meters above the deck.
The Drex turned a corner and entered the chamber. As it did so she was able to make out her colleagues and their five prisoners over by the sweeping arc of the floor-to-ceiling transparency. At the same time they noticed the new arrival, and their reactions, even at a distance, were interesting to observe.
Bassan let out a strangled scream audible clear across the wide floor as he bolted to his right. As the Drex continued to approach, the commando dropped to his knees and buried his head in his arms, as though by not seeing the apparition he could make it go away.
Argolo, Fontes, and Praxedes gripped their weapons (rather tentatively, she thought) and clustered tightly together as they began backing away from the prisoners. As for the latter, they had nowhere to run. Heath supported Gelmann while Shimoda and Iranaputra formed a pathetic shield in front of them. Hawkins stood slightly off by himself, laughing hysterically.
She realized that from her elevated position it was unlikely they could see her. Not that they had any reasonable expectation of doing so. Their attention was understandably preoccupied by the advancing, looming mass of the Drex.
“These are your companions?”
“Only the five off to the right. The others were, but they’re not anymore. They have weapons.”
“I’m shaking in my cosmata. Do you think they might be foolish enough to attempt to employ them?” Before she could reply the alien bent toward the trio far below. It couldn’t be called a bow, exactly, because technically the Drex had no waist. As the tentacle on which she rode bobbed wildly, Ashili tightened her thighs around it until they throbbed.
“You there!” The translation boomed out of the Drex’s cluster of chest instrumentation. “Do you dare think to threaten me with such puny devices?”
“Us?” squeaked Argolo. She promptly tossed her gun aside and put her hands behind her back. Fontes hastily imitated her. Praxedes exhibited an incomprehensible reluctance to mimic the sensible actions of his companions until a tentacle the size of an air conduit slammed into the deck before them and the Autothor hovering at its end expanded to an angry, flaring turquoise sphere ten meters in diameter. His weapon sailed farther than any of the others.
“What devices?” he managed to choke out.
“You intended me physical harm!” Four black and crimson eyes bulged at the tiny humans.
“No, no!” Fontes and Argolo were half dragging, half carrying the sobbing Bassan while their commander struggled to come up with reassuring words. “Just a reflex action, that’s all.”
The Drex was unimpressed. “I interpret it as an unfriendly, however, impotent, gesture.”
“No worries,” Praxedes insisted desperately.
Four legs carried the alien a giant step nearer. Incandescent eyes blazed. “It makes me very, very angry.”
At that the three commandos bolted to their right, hauling the useless Bassan with them as they fled in panic for the doorway. If anything, they accelerated when they reached the outer corridor.
With its four eyes the Drex followed them briefly. Then it turned to the five waiting seniors. Hawkins stopped laughing.
Iranaputra found himself pointing as he frowned. “Can that be you up there, Zabela Ashili?”
She leaned over, gripping the slowly weaving tentacle with her powerful legs. “Sure is. This is a Drex.”
“We’d already reached that conclusion, dear,” said a very drawn Mina Gelmann.
“He’s my friend.”
“I am not your friend.” The alien turned its baleful multiorbited gaze on his passenger. “We are peripheral acquaintances.”
“You should be thankful to these people.” There didn’t seem any point in being overly deferential, she’d decided. If the Drex determined he’d had enough of her, he could shake her off like a piece of litter. Better to challenge its thinking. “They’re the ones who reactivated your ship and released you from a sleep that might otherwise have been eternal.”
“Resulting in alerting the enemy.”
“You can’t be sure of that. What if the enemy had come eventually anyway and found you and the ship both quiescent? They’d have buried you forever.”
“You theorize feebly.” Nevertheless, the tentacle dipped gently to the floor, allowing her a short hop to the deck.
“You know about the approaching alien fleet?” Shimoda asked her.
She nodded. “He assumes it’s the enemy.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said Heath. “This ship can defeat any number of attackers, right?”
“Incorrect.” Avoiding the tiny humans, the Drex lumbered over to the nearest monolith and leaned against it. The Autothor melted into the edifice, which was instantly suffused with a deep blue light. It began to change shape, flowing like a fluid as it adjusted to the outline of the Drex’s body. As soon as the process was complete the Autothor emerged and resumed its normal elliptical form.
Occupied again for the first time in a million years, the battlelith rose imperceptibly and turned, floating some centimeters above the floor on a cushion of indigo energy. Tentacles gestured toward raised inscriptions and other contact points. The Autothor darted obediently from one to the next, sometimes dipping within and then emerging, other times merely making casual contact. The observation chamber came alive as lights brightened throughout the room like phosphorescent sea creatures agitated by the wake of a passing boat.
The six humans marveled at the transformation. Shimoda thought it at once beautiful and ominous.
The portion of lunar surface visible through the sweep of observation window vanished, to be replaced by unwinking starfield. High atop one curving wall, more starfield appeared, within which a multitude of brilliant green lights rotated in concert.
“There the enemy’s advance force,” the Drex announced. The Autothor shot from a tentacle tip to touch the view and it was instantly replaced by another displaying an unfamiliar cluster of stars. “There the course I must set for home. If it is still there after a million years. It lies near the galactic center almost directly opposite your home system. A long journey. But then, I’ve had adequate rest.”
Beneath their feet a slight shiver ran through the fabric of the great ship, imparting a sensation of prodigious forces suddenly summoned to life.
“Wait a minute, old thing.” Heath gazed apprehensively up at where the towering alien lay secure in its command chair. “You’re not leaving just yet, are you?”
“It is clear that you possess sufficient intelligence to infer the obvious.”
Heath glanced around at his friends, back up to the Drex. “But if you flit off into tachyspace, will this unknown fleet of warships follow?”
“I should imagine it will materialize here and begin to search for whatever has drawn it to these coordinates. By that time I expect to be long gone from this system.”
“You should excuse my repeating what my good friend Wesley just said, but they’ll still follow, won’t they?” Gelmann asked.
“Eventually. First they will scour this area to ensure that this ship has departed, and that no further evidence of my species’ presence remains. In the process I imagine they will destroy a good portion of the region where this vessel lay dormant. They are as thorough as they are relentless.”
“Then you have to stay and fight.” Gelmann shook a chiding finger at the tentacled colossus. “You can’t just run away!”
“Mina, for God’s sake!” Hawkins whispered frantically.
The monolithic command chair turned ponderously to face her. Four burning black and red eyes glared superciliously down at the frail bipedal creature that dared to enjoin. “Why not?”
“Let me go, Wallace.” She shook off Hawkins’s restraining hand, squinted up at the Drex. “See here. We didn’t ask you to go and bury yourself on our world. Even so, you were left alone. Nobody bothered you. Now the activation of this ship has apparently attracted this huge alien force. You can’t let them just take up orbit around Earth to ravage and destroy.”
“Watch me.” Tentacles writhed eloquently. “You are nothing to me. Your world is nothing to me. Your species is less than nothing to me.” One eye flicked in Ashili’s direction. “Though you are occasionally amusing, in a primitive, imbecilic sort of way.”
Down through the decades dozens of people had tried to slow Mina Gelmann down. All had failed. The single Drex did no better. She had that rare courage which arose from supreme confidence in the absolute correctness of everything she said. Put otherwise, she talked too fast to realize she might be saying something stupid.
“Earth was your hiding place, your refuge. Don’t you have any gratitude?”
“I was commanded to deep sleep,” the alien rumbled. “I did not request such a fate. I would far rather have departed with my people when the great ship was completed. You cannot request gratitude on behalf of your kind because you did not exist when I was interred. I owe you nothing. Be grateful that I tolerate your irritating presence instead of smearing your puny selves across the floor.”
“Wonderful,” Hawkins muttered. “We finally meet the hypothetical aliens everyone was convinced didn’t exist, and they turn out to be advanced, powerful, and not to give a damn.”
“Ha!” Gelmann put hands on hips and adopted the knowing look which had infuriated generations of suitors. It was the look that said she held the key to the secrets of the universe but there was no point in sharing them because obviously no one else would understand anyway. Especially you.
The heavy lid of flesh above the four eyes sagged slightly.
“Ha?”
“Ha! I was right all along.” She looked back at Hawkins, who tried to shrink into the floor. “He’s just the type.”
“The type? What does that mean?”
“You’re a coward and a bully. Oh, it’s all very well and good for you to threaten us, who are so much smaller than you. But to stand up to a real enemy, like the one that’s coming this way now, noooo. Not you.”
“You try my infinite patience!” The Drex’s words echoed thunderously through the chamber. Hawkins looked around wildly and, finding no immediate cover, hid behind Shimoda.
“See? You know I’m right. Go on, you’re so proud of your logic. Reason it to me. Any mindless animal can rage and stomp and kill. Show me that brain of yours, wherever it is, is capable of concocting more than just feral threats. Or is it?”
The little knot of seniors closed ranks behind her. Ashili held her breath.
A tentacle waved artfully. “You misinterpret. I am directed to return home. I have a responsibility.”
“You have a responsibility to the world which sheltered you and this ship for a thousand millennia. If it hadn’t been such a safe haven, you might not be in a position to return home. Where are your ethics?”
“Section twenty-four, level six,” the Drex replied. “My ship sheltered me; not you, not your world.”
“It won’t trouble your conscience that you could maybe have prevented the deaths of thousands of innocent intelligent beings? You can just fly off into tachyspace knowing that will always be in the back of your mind, to trouble your waking hours and torment your sleep? What would your mother-equivalent say?”
The Drex stared at Ashili. “Your physical technology may be primitive, but your mental weaponry is distressingly advanced. How does anyone stand it?”
