Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

“An unfortunate coincidence,” 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’s steadied Hebuiza’s head with one hand; his other bobbed to make 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 in the last moments. A rising stench drifted around them. “How long until she recovers?”

“Recover?” 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. It was hard to imagine this woman-this child-a threat. She had an innocent, uncomplicated face. Until this moment, Liis hadn’t understood the implications of their mission fully. But now its consequences lay in a soiled heap 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 at her feet.

“Don’t let her fool you.” Yilda watched Liis carefully, as if he’d known what she 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 her shorts and her tee-shirt, 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 rose. Reaching in the pocket of her shorts, she withdrew 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 suddenly 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, glaring down at Yilda. 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 she 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’ 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_. She clenched her jaw.

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? What the hell was he on about? 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 towards 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 self-evident. “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? Or perhaps he might lie out of reflex, as a Facilitator. And there was still the question of how he had such intimate knowledge of the dome and its inhabitants. Liis’ 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 grasped her good arm, began pulling her towards 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 a inexplicable sympathy, as if this girl were her true ally-and the Facilitators her enemies.

Fifty meters into the forest they struck the path that the girl must have been hiking. Nearly a meter wide and covered in a spongy carpet of duff, it tunnelled through the thick foliage and was quickly lost to sight in both directions. Smooth, white rocks lined either side, making it look more like a garden path than a hiking trail.

Without hesitation, Yilda hopped over the low border onto the path and 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, half-running 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