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

Liis looked around the room in perplexity, but saw nothing that might indicate why at this moment, of all moments, the lights had chosen to come on. Until now, it had been the Speaker’s presence that had activated the ceiling panels in the other rooms. She corrected herself: an adult Speaker’s presence. Yet, as far as she could tell, she was the only other living being in this room. She searched the walls, but they were still unbroken; there were no doors visible. Then something occurred to her.

Liis took half a dozen quick steps to the side and scanned the walls to the side of each gantry. From this new angle, an arched doorway, formerly hidden by one of the machines, was now visible. A small figure-Liis recognized Upatal almost immediately-hurried across the intervening space. As she watched, the doorway faded from view, growing translucent, then opaque. Soon, it was indistinguishable from the surrounding wall.

Liis felt a surprising, and almost overwhelming, swell of relief. Stuffing the unlit flare into her pocket, she took long loping strides towards the Speaker, ignoring the tremors of pain that each step set off in her arm. She was too happy to care.

They met halfway between the wall and the centre of the room. Upatal had Hebuiza’s bolt gun slung over her shoulder; she was breathless and appeared agitated. Gesturing to the centre of the room, she seized Liis by the wrist and began dragging her back toward the trench.

“Wait!”

The word brought Upatal up short. The Speaker turned, her brow drawn down in consternation.

Liis pointed at both of them and then at the place where the doorway had been, trying to indicate that they should leave. She was about to attempt her pantomime of Yilda again, hoping to convey the danger of remaining here, when the Speaker seized Liis’ hand with renewed vigour and turned toward the centre of the room. “Ilda!” she said urgently over her shoulder.

Reluctantly, Liis let herself be pulled along. She glanced ruefully back at the wall.

After half a dozen steps, Upatal released Liis’ hand and, with another anxious gesture, indicated they should hurry. Liis couldn’t see where they could possibly be going, unless it was to the gantry. Nevertheless, Liis hurried after. The Speaker ran forward, Liis following closely behind. They approached the trench. Next to it, the gantry still mindlessly expelled its cargo into the maws of the recycler. Upatal ignored the gantry completely. Instead, she ran past it and stepped out over the grinding plates.

Incredibly, she didn’t fall.

Although she sagged momentarily below floor level, something invisible buoyed her up. As she sped across the trench, the air thickened around her feet, coalescing into a fog, a tenuous bridge forming above the disks. As soon as the Speaker stepped on the opposite side, the narrow span dissolved, collapsing into thousands of minute particles that showered down and were ground up by the plates.

Liis stood on the edge of the bank, her heart hammering. Of course they wouldn’t let living Speakers stumble into this thing, she thought. They’d have safeguards. To distinguish between a living being and a dead fetus. But, once the machine was going, would it recognize outsiders, like her, as something alive and not to be harmed? She didn’t feel like running out over the trench, the way Upatal had, to find out.

The Speaker, passed through a ring of structures that looked like children’s benches and reached the centre of the room; she turned and gestured impatiently for Liis. Liis shook her head. She pointed down into the trench. Upatal frowned in puzzlement.

I’ll have to show her. Carefully extending a leg over the trench, Liis let her foot down until it hung in mid-air above the turning plates. They continued grinding, and the bridge that had materialized to support Upatal didn’t form.

Upatal understood immediately. She ran back, the bridge forming almost as an afterthought to her passage over the trench, and seized Liis’ wrist again. She stepped back onto the nebulous structure, which hadn’t yet had a chance to dissolve, and gently, but firmly, pulled on Liis’ arm.

Liis placed a foot on the cloudy surface; centimeters below, the discs spun relentlessly. The bridge provided a solid surface with good traction.

Liis stepped out onto the span and quickly followed Upatal across to the other side. As the Speaker stepped off ahead of her, Liis felt the walkway sag slightly. But she was safely across before the bridge collapsed completely.

Inside the ring of benches a black line on the floor, a final circle, enclosed the centre of the room. Upatal crossed this boundary and made directly for the pole at the very centre, pulling Liis along. With her free hand the Speaker touched the amber disc; it turned red.

Liis’ stomach fluttered. The air around her seemed to stir. Then she noticed that the walls were moving. What the hell? she thought.

Liis realised she’d gotten things backwards. The walls weren’t moving; she was. She felt a brief moment of vertigo as she readjusted her perceptions: she stood on a rising platform, its edges defined by the black line she’d seen on the floor. Upatal touched Liis’ chest, motioning that Liis should not move. Turning, the Speaker sprinted to the edge of the platform and jumped. Landing on the ground, Upatal sped over the trench and ran back towards the wall.

Liis felt a spasm of anxiety. She thought about following, hesitated. Without Upatal, she wouldn’t be able to get over the trench. And the Speaker had clearly wanted her to stay here. The platform rose; Upatal moved further and further away. Then it was too late. The decision had been made for her. The platform was far off the ground and jumping had become too risky. Liis cursed herself for hesitating.

She looked up. Overhead, a dark circle on the ceiling matched the circumference of the platform. At its centre was a small opening, the same diameter at the pole. But there was no shaft into which the platform could ascend. Now half a dozen meters away, the ceiling approached rapidly. Unless there was a safety mechanism, in a few seconds she’d be crushed between the two planes. Heart hammering wildly, she went down to her knees and then lay on her stomach, turning her head sideways.

The space between ceiling and platform diminished to two meters. Then one.

Liis gritted her teeth.

She felt the ceiling touch her shoulder blades. The material gave, like an elasticized film, and the platform slipped through it with no more resistance than a diver might have felt breaking the surface of a pool.

Liis lay on her stomach, staring stupidly around a circle of benches that was identical to the one in the room below.

“Ah. Bit of luck,” Yilda said, stepping into view from behind her, his rifle angled down at her face. “Won’t have to go to the bother of finding you.”

With a strength belied by his appearance, Yilda jerked Liis to her feet, nearly yanking her arm out of its socket. He’d grabbed her by her good arm; still, her broken arm pained her from the sharp movement. Yilda shoved her roughly and she stumbled a few steps backwards. He didn’t look the least put out by the effort.

Liis could now see this room was a twin to the one below. Only here the surface of the trench was sealed. And all of the gantries seemed to be busy: one was less than ten meters away, working in the closest rank of incubators; three others were positioned along the wall. Inside their superstructures containers rose and fell; immediately to the right of each machine were several columns of dark holes, emptied of their incubators. Yilda’s destroying the fetuses, Liis realised.

“So nice to see you again.”

Yilda circled behind Liis, keeping his rifle trained on her; she turned to follow his motion. He stopped beside one of the low white benches; above it, three-dimensional projections filled the air, each a simple geometric shape filled with schematics or scrolling text.

“Now, then,” Yilda said. “Where are the Speakers?”

Liis said nothing. She looked between Yilda and the busy gantries.

He aimed his rifle at the bridge of her nose. “Answer the question.”

“I don’t know.”

“The next level down, perhaps?”

Liis still refused to answer.

“Checked the upper levels already. So I assume they’re hiding on one of three below.”

“Upper levels?” Liis craned her neck. Etched on the ceiling was a circle that was identical to the one in which she stood. In this room-and the one below-there had to be a several thousand incubators. If the pattern repeated on the half a dozen or more levels of this building, and in each of sixty-four buildings that ringed the mountain….

“You’re stalling,” Yilda said. “I will only ask you one more time-”

“You’re a fluke,” she said.

Yilda frowned.

“There are hundreds of thousands of these incubators. Maybe millions. Yet there are only eighteen Speakers at the relay station.”

Yilda arched his eyebrows slightly.

“The ability to communicate isn’t a product of science at all.” Liis fixed him with a stare. “It’s a fluke of biology. Nexus doesn’t know how to reproduce a Speaker. Except by breeding twinned clones in groups large enough to produce the statistically probable eighteen.”

“What you know-or think you know-is of little consequence.” Yilda’s speech had now completely lost its usual hitches, his pauses and answers to his own questions. “Tell me where the Speakers are.”

“Gone.”

Yilda advanced until the snout of his rifle pressed against the fabric of her tee-shirt. Liis could feel her heart beat against the cold ring of the muzzle. “Where?”

She hesitated. “With their comrades. They left me behind.”

Yilda’s fist struck her square across the cheek; she staggered backwards, her legs almost folding under her. Holding a hand against her burning cheek, she watched Yilda advance on her again.

“You’re lying. I’ve accounted for all of the Speakers. They have no comrades left. Now then, let’s try again. Where are your friends?”

Blood pooled under Liis’ tongue; she spat it out. “They’re not my friends,” she said. Her jaw ached.

“I found Hebuiza. Have to admit I didn’t think you had it in you, executing him like that.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Liis said. “The Speaker shot Hebuiza.”

Yilda lifted his narrow shoulders; Liis jumped back reflexively, expecting another blow. But he was only shrugging. “It makes no difference to me who killed him. What’s important is that you were there. You let it happen. So I can only assume you’ve taken the Speakers’ side. Against me. Now that you’ve demonstrated your willingness to betray me-”

“The woman shot Hebuiza. Then they ran off before I could do anything. I ran after them, but they’d already disappeared. I got lost and ended up here.”

“Wrong again,” Yilda said with a weary sigh. “You wouldn’t be here unless they accompanied you. They were the only way you could have gotten through the intervening doors. All the microsensors are keyed to admit only those displaying multiple aspects of the proper bio-signature. Which means they would open only for a Speaker bred here.” He tapped the snout of his rifle on the platform. “Furthermore, this lift wouldn’t have activated without one