Artemis Invaded Read online

  She settled down cross-legged, gently touching the mushroom curtain with her fingertips. Although their communication with Artemis had been as much wordless as shaped by words, still Adara—human as she was—had shaped it into words. She recalled them now.

  “Velvet darkness, soft as sound,” she recited softly. “My shadow, my other self, can you hear me?”

  That wasn’t quite right … Artemis was not her “other self” as Sand Shadow was. How had Artemis defined herself in those earlier contacts? Not just as a neural network, that had been Adara’s human mind, seeking to reduce the complex to a few simple terms. “Neural network, seeded spores activated by annihilating desire, interlacing mosaic, pieces yet unplaced.” That had been it. It made a lot more sense now than it had at the time.

  Adara repeated these words in her mind, feeling Sand Shadow shaping the remembered images that went with them. Closer, but still not enough … Adara lowered herself to the level of the mushrooms, stared at them, repeating the words very softly. Neural network. (That spider’s web of tangled threads.) Seeded spores. (Lovely, like the tiniest snowflakes on a very cold winter’s day, but detailed, minute dandelion seeds drifting with purposeless purpose.) Interlacing mosaic. (Concentrate on the image of connection, not on the gaping holes they now suspected were there.)

  Closer. They were closer, but still not quite enough. Adara saw how her breath stirred the delicate gills on the underside of the mushroom. Saw them vibrating, like the strings of the wind harps Bruin put in his garden when the weather was fine. That music, played without fingers, was both haunting and unpredictable, stirring the soul to flights of fancy.

  Without realizing it, Adara realized her whispered words were becoming a chant, the chant rising and falling, making its own melody. Then, soft as a breeze, she began to sing, letting the rise and fall of her voice stir the delicate gills, while keeping her breath so soft that even the thinnest veil in the cluster did not stir. Her mental image changed, ceasing to be darkness, becoming instead the palest light, the softest breath, the gentle scent of moonflowers, all weaving into a music that called, coaxed, comforted, cajoled. Vaguely she was aware of Sand Shadow adding the whistling cries of a puma kitten—sweet notes often mistaken for birdsong by the uninitiated—to the mix.

  “Whyfore of yourself? Do you flee it? We will give you eyes, ears, nose, fingers, paws, whiskers, tail. Is the whyfore so terrible that you no longer seek it? Come to us! Come to us!”

  At last, weakly, tentatively, with nothing about it of the teasing child who had so confidently asked about the difference between good and bad behavior, the sensibility that was Artemis touched the minds of the human and the puma. Her thoughts trembled so that Adara struggled to sort meaning from what was a flood of emotion rather than words.

  “I, so scared, broken apart … By your voices interwoven, laced together. Alone, no more!”

  Interlude: Giver Given

  Song breathed onto my gills,

  Wind harp Artemesian

  Plays upon my soul.

  The veil trembles,

  tears,

  revealing …

  Before: There was mind.

  Before: I had heart.

  Before: Gifts given so I might give.

  Now soul,

  Now self,

  Now I see …

  My beloved’s face

  must be me.

  9

  Spiders and Webs

  Bruin did not seem unduly worried about Adara’s absence. “She said she was going to firmly establish contact with Artemis before coming back into this dead zone. Otherwise, her efforts might be for nothing. If she’s gone seven or eight days without sending a message, then I’ll go looking for her. Meanwhile, I’ll mind your camp on one condition. You all need to come out at least once a day and help with some of the chores. I’m an old man and Kipper is just a boy.”

  Griffin didn’t need to see the twinkle in the old bear’s eyes to know that Bruin was perfectly capable of taking care of everything to do with feeding them and caring for their mounts and camp, even without Kipper’s aid. He knew a price was being exacted for the hunter’s services and did his best not to resent it. As he carried a dirty pot down to the stream, Griffin realized how easily he had slipped back into the privileged mindset in which he had been reared. During his travels with Adara and Terrell, he’d taken pride in doing his best to contribute, even if that meant doing nothing more sophisticated than grooming the horses (Sam the Mule would only accept Terrell) or turning the spit over the fire.

  Is it because I’m almost back in my element, back where the skills I spent a lifetime acquiring are actually useful? Something similar happened when we first moved into the Old One’s Sanctum. Last time it took a puma insisting I play marbles to shake me out of it. Now I get gently slapped by an old bear.

  He felt distinctly unsettled, as if there was something he was missing. Unable to pinpoint it, he resisted the pull of his researches and turned to Kipper.

  “Want me to show you a marble game from my home world? We played it a lot on the road. Maybe we can start playing again for a bit in the evenings, as a break.”

  Kipper’s face brightened, and Griffin didn’t miss Terrell’s expression of pleasure as the factotum turned to find his own bag of marbles.

  Good, he thought, starting to draw circles in the soft dirt of their camp. Time enough for research later. Surely, there will be time enough.

  * * *

  As if in reward for his balancing work and play, over the next several days, Griffin found additional information that helped refine his ideas about what the researchers in Leto’s facility had been working toward.

  “Power,” he said to Terrell, “was a definite limiting factor, one the Old Imperials were working hard to get around. They had some amazing fuel cells, but the problem was that the elements they used to generate power had some nasty side effects.”

  Terrell nodded. “I remember you telling me about that—cold heat that burns far more deeply and dangerously than fire. If you hadn’t reassured me that Leto’s complex was certainly sealed against such damage, I don’t think even my friendship with you could have gotten me back in here.”

  Griffin nodded. He felt fairly certain that Leto’s complex was safe. He’d been to a lot of Old Empire ruins; there trace radiation was always due to the weapons used. The Imperials had apparently safeguarded their domestic power sources—some specialists speculated that they had been engineered to deactivate if breached.

  “My respect for their technology blinded me to the serious challenges in making miniature high-powered fuel cells,” Griffin admitted. “I’ve shown you how the battle armor contained its own power unit or units. The more powerful the weapons, the larger the power unit. However, the larger the unit, the more radiation it generated, so that, in turn, the amount of shielding also increased.”

  Terrell nodded. “Basically, there seems to be a point after which adding further refinements to a suit—whether flight capacity or weapons or some other function—wasn’t worth trying because power demands made the suit too cumbersome.”

  “Precisely. Hold on to that thought for a moment. I need to go off on a tangent, but I promise you, it will make sense in the end.”

  Terrell grinned. “Yes, seegnur.”

  Griffin made a rude gesture Terrell had taught him. “Remember when we talked about how long-distance space travel is accomplished by use of machines that fold space? And how the Old Imperials had some sort of technology that enabled their pilots to further refine that folding process?”

  Terrell nodded.

  “I’ve been looking at ship plans in one of Leto’s data banks. It took me a while to figure out the schematics because the designers were allowing for factors alien to those we use. Eventually, I realized that one series of emblems indicated a form of shielding similar but different from that used to block radiation. Earlier today, I was staring at the plans and … Have you ever had your brain shift on you, so that sud
denly you see a problem differently?”

  “Many times.”

  “Well, that’s what happened to me. I realized that this particular shielding always separated the piloting area and various related sensor arrays from the rest of the ship. I’m guessing—and only guessing—that the mind pilots needed to be free from interference by other minds if they were to be able to find their way through space.”

  “And the shielding,” Terrell said, “let them do their job in a ship that carried passengers.”

  “Exactly!” Griffin agreed. “Now for the next part … A spaceship needs a great deal of power, but the elements the seegnur used to generate energy are dangerous to the human body. In ship designs, the engines were always placed so that the radiation would not penetrate the ship—common sense. If mind pilots also required separate areas, ships carrying large numbers of people would need to be enormous. Well and good. Useful. Efficient. But not very stealthy.”

  “Which wouldn’t matter,” Terrell said taking up the thread, “if you were sending the equivalent of a cargo ship or even a passenger vessel—but it would matter a great deal if you were bringing in an army and didn’t want your enemies to know.”

  “You came up with that fast enough,” Griffin said, slightly miffed.

  “I’ve been doing nothing for days upon days but draw the various models of the armored suits we’ve found here,” Terrell said, too interested to pay any attention to Griffin’s annoyance.

  Griffin let excitement wash over him again. “What would they need so much more power for? I think they were designing armored suits with enough power to enable individual soldiers to move between planets, maybe even between systems. That’s the difference between the armored suits they already had and what Leto calls ‘spaveks.’”

  “That would be a huge advantage,” Terrell said, “especially given how much damage one of those armored suits can cause.”

  Griffin nodded. “I feel certain that large troop carriers would have been detected. Even today, most planets are ringed with satellites meant to track approaching traffic. “

  “But why spaveks?” Terrell asked. “Why not just make small ships? Even a small ship would permit the power cells to be placed some distance from the pilots. Then they wouldn’t need to wear such a massive amount of power on their backs.”

  “I think the designers explored that option,” Griffin said, “based on some of the material I’ve found in the data banks. There certainly were advantages, but even a small ship is bulky compared to a suit. Bulk means mass—and when in a gravity well—weight.”

  He paused, wondering if he should make sure Terrell remembered what a gravity well was, but Terrell waved him on. “I’m following you … Go on.”

  “Anyhow, both additional mass and additional weight would mean that additional power would be needed to move them.”

  “So,” Terrell said, “that puts us back to that first problem—the more power you need, the more potent the fuel cell. The more potent the fuel cell, the more radiation needs to be shielded. The more shielding, the more bulk.”

  “Right! So, I think that one of the projects—maybe the main project—being researched here on Artemis was coming up with an armored suit that would enable a mind pilot to jump right inside the enemy’s defenses. Most defenses would have been designed with battle cruisers in mind. Something as small as an armored human could slip in as easily as minnows through a mesh meant to catch whales.”

  Terrell nodded. “I agree. Another advantage of more efficient fuel cells would be that any weapons built into the suits would be tremendously more powerful.”

  “I see where you’re coming from,” Griffin said. “Once the transition was complete, the power demands for movement would be comparatively minimal. That would free up energy for weapons. The suits would be able to move faster, too. This is fascinating!”

  Terrell gave him a funny look. “You may find it fascinating. I find it frightening. I hope they were stuck on the fuel cell problem and hadn’t started refining weapons and whatever they used for flight.”

  Griffin was puzzled. “Why?”

  Terrell just stared at him. After a moment, Griffin understood.

  “Because,” he said slowly, “while we don’t understand what the mind pilots did that refined the ability to fold space, we do understand—all too well—both how to use weapons, and how to fly both space and atmospheric craft. Those new technologies could be put into use as soon as they could be manufactured.”

  “And from what you have said,” Terrell added, “the example of how the seegnur destroyed themselves and much of what they had achieved has done nothing to keep the surviving fragments of their empire from pursuing war.”

  “All too true,” Griffin agreed. He forced a smile. “Aren’t you glad I haven’t sent a message to my family? Months, probably years, will pass before anyone comes after me. First they need to miss me, then they need to figure out where I went—something that won’t be easy, since I very carefully hid all my research notes. After that, they’d need to get here and locate me—or at least the significant areas on the planet. As I told you, from orbit, even your biggest cities are hard to find.”

  Terrell nodded. “Still, even with the danger involved, I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ll give this up as a bad job? Maybe there was a good reason Maiden’s Tear was prohibited.”

  Griffin understood the sense of what Terrell said, but he couldn’t believe there really was any risk involved. It was likely the researchers had still been working on the fuel cell problem. The other armored suits—the ones worn by Leto’s defenders and those worn by her attackers—were in very bad shape. Reconstructing their weaponry wouldn’t be at all easy.

  “I’d like to keep looking,” he said, knowing he was taking advantage of Terrell’s training, “for a bit longer. This place is a dream come true.”

  From the look on Terrell’s face, Griffin knew that the factotum thought that Leto’s complex and all it represented was a horrible and pervasive nightmare.

  * * *

  In the days that followed, Julyan had little time alone with the Old One—or Maxwell, as he must be careful to call him now. Seamus had been retrieved, represented to the Dane brothers as Julyan’s idiot cousin, and pretty much left on his own as long as he stayed near the base camp. Occasionally, the Old One would send messages to Julyan through Seamus, but these were simple, more to establish a protocol for private communication than holding any significant content.

  Work was under way to clear the underwater passage between Mender’s Isle and the Sanctum—work complicated because the subterranean complex on Mender’s Isle was still mostly underwater and had to be drained first

  “We have an advantage Griffin did not,” Siegfried said one evening. “He told you that he carried with him packets of nanobots that would hopefully reverse the damage done five hundred years ago.”

  “That’s right,” the Old One replied. “However, he said that these had been buried with his shuttle. We both thought that in time some of these would leak into the planet’s system and slowly reactivate dormant technology, but that the process might take years.”

  Siegfried nodded. “But, as you can see, we are having no…”

  “Little,” growled Falkner, who had spent a good portion of the day rebuilding a pump because some key mechanism had refused to function.

  “Little,” corrected Siegfried with a sigh, “difficulty using the equipment we brought with us. True, we did our best to seal our gear from contamination, but we also brought with us our own antivirus. We’ve run a few tests and feel confident that in a far shorter time than you imagine, it may be possible to reactivate some of the equipment on the mainland.”

  “There’s a considerable amount of water there,” the Old One said, “more than was here. Will your pumps be able to handle that?”

  Falkner shrugged. “I think so. I don’t want to promise until I see the place myself, but surely the original construction contained som
e sort of drains. My guess is that these were closed when the place was sealed. Since you didn’t know to look for them, you didn’t open them. Once we get them working for us, the pumps will be able to do the rest.”

  Julyan didn’t think the Old One was particularly pleased by this casual dismissal of his competence, a feeling that was confirmed when a look of fear flashed across Seamus’s face, but he doubted the Dane brothers suspected anything. Although in many ways they seemed more sophisticated than Griffin, they were less sensitive to the responses of others, more unconsciously arrogant.

  Perhaps Griffin would have been the same if he hadn’t crashed his shuttle and needed help, Julyan thought. These men have arrived with their abilities unhampered. We are convenient to them, but not necessary.

  At that moment, Alexander, the youngest of the three brothers, pushed a restless hand through his bronze curls and turned to the Old One.

  “Would you mind if I borrowed Julyan for a few hours? I’m weary of ship’s supplies. Perhaps we could catch some fresh fish or gather some berries or something.”

  The Old One bowed, hands pressed against his thighs in the traditional fashion. “I would be happy to have him accompany you, seegnur. Julyan is a trained hunter and I’m sure he feels quite caged in these close quarters.”

  “Wonderful!” Alexander tapped a small unit he wore on his left wrist. “Call me if you need me, brothers.”

  Once they had left the subterranean complex, Julyan led the way to a cove that faced away from the town of Spirit Bay. Automatically, he scanned the waters outside of the artificial reef that protected the islands from any ships. As he expected, there were none, for the main channel used by vessels going into Spirit Bay was on the opposite side of the Haunted Islands. The cove itself was well sheltered from casual observation, one of the reasons Julyan had favored it.