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

Liis leaned forward, peered through the hatch of the second cell-she had decided now they were not access tubes, but more likely stasis cells-half-expecting to see a body. But it was empty. She ran her hand over the join where the hatch met the wall. Perfectly flush. If she had had her eyes closed, she would never have been able to detect the seam. She straightened, raised her gutted watch, but could see nothing in the dim circle of light other than the bare wall and its column of cells.

Liis weighed her options.

She could wait here; Upatal might return. Then again, she might not. Perhaps the Speaker had abandoned her, believing her chances for survival improved without the added burden of a wounded outsider. If that was the case, Liis couldn’t really blame her. I might have done the same thing in her position, she thought. After all, I brought death to their world. Until now the biggest calamity they’ve had to deal with would have been a stubbed toe. So why would Upatal want to help me?

Liis could think of no compelling reason. Yet she wanted to believe the woman wouldn’t have abandoned her. Without the Speaker’s help, Liis knew she was as good as dead. But with them….

Yilda said there was a cure. If I can find the Speakers, make them understand, maybe I can convince them to help me.

There was still Yilda. He was out there, hunting Speakers. In fact, if Upatal hadn’t fully understood Liis’ warning, she and her companion might already be dead. And Liis didn’t fool herself for a moment either: after what had happened to Hebuiza, Yilda would dispose of her as readily as he dispatched the Speakers. Of that she was certain.

I’m going to have to kill him.

The realization chilled Liis. Upatal had coolly held the gun to Hebuiza’s head and pulled the trigger without hesitation. Could she do the same to Yilda?

He lied to us all along, she thought savagely, feeling anger burn in her chest. He let Josua and Sav go to their deaths without a second thought. And he destroyed Bh’Haret, if not directly, then by inviting the wrath of Nexus. He gambled all our lives on his new empire-and lost.

Liis clenched her hand into a fist, suffocating the light of her watch; pain shuddered up the tendons and muscle in her broken arm. It was good, this sharp ache. It brought things into focus. He’s controlled us through our fear. I can’t let him do that anymore.

She relaxed; the faint illumination of the watch returned. When the time comes, Liis thought grimly, I won’t hesitate.

Despite her bravado, a tiny doubt had lodged in her stomach like a cold pebble. She tried to ignore it. Instead, she set her mind on her immediate problems: finding a way out of this room and locating Upatal. Squatting, she placed her watch on the floor and pulled a flare from her backpack. Although she still had no idea what kind of room she was in, the sounds she made echoed in a way that suggested it was a large space. Large enough, anyway, for the flare not to cause her undue grief.

Liis pushed a protruding tab near its tip, sparking it to life.

Light exploded around her, giving her the briefest glimpse of the room, like an overexposed snapshot, before her vision was completely overwhelmed. She shut her eyes, waiting for her vision to adjust, trying to sort out in her head the details of what she had seen: in front of her column after column of cells marched upward; before each column a precise groove incising the floor and running off into the darkness; to her right, ranks of machines rising from the floor; and further away, rearing up nearly to the ceiling, a dark looming shape with an overhang, like an immense gallows. But the strongest impression she was left with was that of the extent of the space: it was big, so big, in fact, that the candle power of her igniting flare hadn’t reached out far enough to touch any of the other walls or the ceiling.

Liis opened her eyes. Afterimages, wobbling amber circles and broken red lines, dogged her vision momentarily, then faded. The flare hissed in her ear, casting a wide, pale circle of light, its radius of illumination perhaps twenty meters. Along the wall in both directions the columns of cells repeated at regular intervals. The rank of machines Liis had seen began perhaps ten meters away. They looked more like sculptures. The closest rank appeared to be a row of small dark cubes set atop wide cylindrical pedestals; several meters behind that was a similar row, only here the pedestals supported elongated boxes instead of perfect cubes; in the next rank, the boxes now stretched long enough to resemble small coffins. Beyond that was uncertain darkness. The grooves in the floor ran between adjacent machines in each row, neatly subdividing the ranks of machines into a large, regular grid.

Liis stooped, dropped the flare on the ground, and struggled into her backpack. Scooping up the flare, she raised her arm high and began following the wall, looking for a door. Every few meters she passed a column of the strange cells, an identical groove running out from the base of each column. She stopped to peer into a cell. Empty. Perhaps she had guessed wrong. She could see no possible need for so many stasis cells-after all, Yilda had said there were only eighteen Speakers here. Maybe they weren’t stasis cells after all, but served an esoteric purpose which she couldn’t possibly fathom. Liis continued walking. She passed column after column of empty cells without finding any sign of an exit-or encountering an intersecting wall.

Five minutes after she had set out, Liis paused when she caught a glimpse of movement. It was on the periphery of the flare’s wavering light and seemed to be receding in a steady, mechanical movement through the ranks of machines, toward the centre of the room. Whatever it was, it was tall and dark. Although Liis could only see the base of the thing, it reminded her of the looming hook she’d glimpsed in the initial burst of light from the flare. In a few seconds it was completely absorbed by the shadows. Liis took a step in the direction the thing had gone, then thought better of following it. She had to find a way out of this room, not chase after a mindless machine. Or what she hoped was a mindless machine. She continued walking, more cautiously now, casting backward glances.

Several minutes passed. At one point she realized she’d forgotten her watch on the floor when she’d lit the flare. She thought about turning around and going back for it, then decided to continue, at least as for the time. This flare would burn for some time yet, more than enough to go back, if need be.

At first, Liis didn’t notice the glow emanating from the cells. The light they threw was so faint that her own sphere of illumination drowned their glimmer out completely. But suddenly she was startled to see a stack of tube hatches were already visible-faintly limned as ghostly blue-green circles-just beyond the reach of her light. She looked back behind her and could see, albeit more faintly, the same glow. She held the flare up to the nearest hatch. Inside, a knurled, dark knot, the size of a balled fist, was suspended in a cloudy liquid. A twisting funiculus wound through cloudy fluid to attach to the nipple on the back wall. She checked the tube beneath. It contained a similar shadowy clot.

It’s an incubator, Liis realised. Yilda said they cloned the Speakers at the relay station. Suddenly she understood why Upatal had brought her here-to hide her. Perhaps to the Speakers this place symbolized safety. But the exact opposite was true: If Yilda was bent on destroying the relay station, flushing the contents of these cells be one of his priorities.

With a renewed sense of urgency, Liis hurried on; she passed hundreds more active incubators. Now that she was certain of their use, she was baffled by the sheer number of them. Why so many cells if there were only eighteen Speakers here? It made no sense.

Liis moved on. The celadon glow emanating from the cells intensified until it was visible despite the wavering light of the flare. When Liis next paused to look into an incubator, she saw not the clearly formed fetus she was expecting, but was startled to find each cell contained two fetuses attached to a single umbilical-parabiotic twins, the crowns of their foreheads conjoined so that they looked like a mirrored images of one another.

Liis hurried ahead, moving towards the brightening circles. Half a dozen minutes passed.

Abruptly, the cells ahead ceased glowing.

She stopped in her tracks, peered inside the cell beside her. The fetuses appeared to be near the end of the third trimester. Already Liis could detect similarities to Yilda, the weak chins, the watery grey eyes. Even the small round stomachs reminded her of Yilda’s paunch. The one nearest her moved, its tiny arm jerking. Liis pulled back in surprise. Recovering herself, she jogged ahead and peered into a darkened hatch. The cell was vacant.

Liis passed dozens more columns of dark, empty incubators.

Then, a few meters ahead, something protruded from the wall at waist height. Hurrying forward, she realised that the lowest cell door in a column was open. She stopped in front of it-and cursed softly. Her watch lay on the floor, where she’d put it when she’d grabbed the flare._ I’ve been walking in a circle_, she thought. She remembered the giant cylindrical structures they’d seen ringing the mountains and knew now that she was inside one. Stepping up to the cell, she kneed the hatch.

It swung to, sealing silently.

In her entire circuit of the space-she couldn’t quite bring herself to think of structure this vast as a room-Liis had seen nothing but these cells and the unadorned, grey wall. She recalled how smooth the hatch seam had been. If there was an exit from this place, and it was composed of material identical to that of the wall, it would be impossible to detect-and impossible to open without a Speaker.

Liis lowered her arm; the radius of light diminished.

She could wait here until her flare died-as it must soon-or she could check out the rest of the chamber. She thought about the silent machine she’d seen earlier. It had been moving toward the centre of the room; maybe there was something there. A ramp or a stairway, perhaps.

She struck out from the wall, following the groove that began in front of the column of cells and ran between the ranks of machines.

As she approached the first ring-for now she understood the machines were arranged in concentric circles