Galactic exploration, p.22
Galactic Exploration, page 22
Sweat beaded on his brow.
Trixie remembered how cold it was, but that wasn't apparent in the memory scan. They watched as the thinker began examining his innards, poking around as Berry panted for breath.
There was a strange whimpering sound, like that of an animal in distress. Anderson commented on it. Diana rested her hand on Anderson's forearm, trying not to make it too obvious as she indirectly suggested it was Trixie crying in the chamber.
Trixie was picking up on all the body language as she walked back and forth. She may not have understood why, but the straight posture held by Dr. Phillips showed Trixie how she treated this clinically, with a detachment Trixie could not understand.
Commander Anderson had his lips drawn in tight, his brow tilted forward, showing the intensity with which he was concentrating.
Diana looked concerned, the expression of horror on her face made it clear she was shocked by what they were witnessing.
Berry was withdrawn. For him, it must have been surreal to see his former self, going through such torture and pain. He sat there, his shoulders slumped, his back hunched. His lips were down-turned, capturing the loss and heartache he must have felt inside.
TRIXIE... TR...IX... IE...
They could hear Berry, but they couldn't see him. They could only see Trixie's arms wrapped up hard across her chest. In the soft light, shapes moved in the distance beyond her, but they couldn't make them out.
“Can we magnify that?” Anderson asked.
“No,” Dr. Phillips replied. “That's all there is.”
Trixie... please....
Her Berry was pleading with her for release.
In real time, Trixie bit at her fingernails. She looked up at the dark creatures lurking over him in the holograph. Their vast shell-backs towered over his broken body. Hints of phosphorescence ran around the edge of their shells in a ripple. They chatted with their legs, tapping on the roots.
“What is that?” Anderson asked. “Some kind of Morse code?”
No one answered.
Trixie... please... Please, Honey. You know what to do.
“What was the smell?” Diana asked. “What did Berry mean earlier when he talked about the smell?”
“What does he mean, you know what to do? How did you know what to do?” Anderson asked.
“It was the smell of death,” Trixie replied. “In the Swift , Berry showed me how the gas pooled low to the ground. When they caught us, one of the gas cylinders was leaking. I could smell it in the air. Berry called it the smell of death, and that was when I knew what he wanted me to do.”
As she spoke these words, the holograph showed her creeping forward over toward a discarded gas cylinder lying against the base of the vivisection platform.
“Hold it there,” Anderson said as Trixie glanced up catching the image of hundreds of thinkers lining the roof of the chamber. A soft glow emanated from around the edge of their shells. Patterns rippled across the crowd, displaying synchronized colors and pulses across the hundred or so thinkers on the walls.
“Look at them,” Diana said. “There are so many of them.”
“Look at their orientation,” Berry said. It was the first time he'd spoken since the memory began replaying. “They're not holding on to anything. Each of them is naturally anchored there, at a right angle to the wall.”
“Up is always up,” Trixie said, trying to explain the bizarre gravitational alignment found within the alien craft. “Every wall is a floor. If you jump to the ceiling, it becomes the floor, and the ground you just left becomes your ceiling.”
“And you did this?” Anderson asked, looking at Trixie. “You stood on one of these walls and it became a floor?”
She stopped pacing for a moment, staring at the hundreds of thinkers lining the chamber walls. Dr. Phillips had this portion of her memory on a loop, so they could watch those few seconds constantly replaying as they tried to glean as much information as they could from this fragment.
“Yes,” Trixie replied.
“Look at the architecture,” Berry said. “Look at the way the chamber walls slope together, it's almost like they were inside a pyramid, or inside a Gothic cathedral.”
“Do you know where this was?” Anderson asked. “Where were you inside their ship when you saw this?”
“Deep underground,” Trixie replied. “Lots of tunnels.”
The memory continued to unfold and Trixie found herself watching as her hands twisted the faucet handle on the side of one of the cylinders. Acetylene hissed from the cylinder, coming out in a liquid, seething and bubbling as it vaporized into a fine mist hanging low to the ground. Trixie's viewpoint switched to the platform and up at Berry as she crept away, moving carefully backwards.
Thank you, Trix.
The thinkers were preoccupied, examining Berry's kidneys and liver in close detail.
Berry screamed.
Workers swarmed around the raised platform, gathering up the drops of crimson blood and carrying them away in silken pouches protruding from their abdomens.
The thinkers chatted, their legs clicking against the roots. Berry was panting, chanting under his breath.
Set me free, babe. Set me free.
As the memory replayed, Trixie's gaze remained locked on the thinkers as she moved around the darkened chamber.
Anderson, Phillips, Diana and Berry fell silent, barely breathing as they watched her escape unfold in the holograph.
In her mind, Trixie was acting out the motion she saw on the holograph, bending down, fiddling with one imaginary cylinder and then another as she followed her past actions.
Workers streamed in trying to control the seeping gas, but by catching pockets of acetylene and carrying it away, they were merely helping the volatile substance spread.
A fine mist hung over the ground, spreading out like a fog as Berry continued his mantra, mumbling as he called for Trixie to set him free.
The fog lay heavy in the gaps between the roots, but the thinkers didn't notice, they were too absorbed by the torture. Their rhythmic clicking on the seemingly wooden roots was like the mindless chant of a crowd baying for blood. The clicking pulsated through the chamber, growing in intensity.
Berry fell silent, his mumbling had come to an end, whether he was dead or unconscious was unknown.
Flashes of phosphorescence erupted from the two principle thinkers on the vivisection platform, rippling around the outer rim of their carapaces. Each was the mirror image of the other.
Within seconds, the glow reverberated across the vast walls of the chamber as hundreds of thinkers joined in the excitement.
With her empty hand, Trixie fiddled with something. On the holograph, she lit the small pilot light on the welder fed by a tiny cylinder set into the handle. In the interrogation room, they watched in silence as Trixie reached down and lit the gas, watching as a low front of blue rippled out over the roots, racing through the chamber.
The thinkers reacted, their chanting ceased abruptly. Towers of workers rose up, each climbing on the back of the other, stretching up around her like branches breaking up through the roots, trying to ensnare her.
The first of the explosions knocked Trixie back into a vast tunnel set into the floor of the chamber.
“Did you catch that?” Berry asked. “She moved through 270 degrees, not quite tumbling over.”
“It's the walls becoming floors thing,” Phillips said.
Anderson and Diana were silent. Trixie appreciated their silence. This was not some documentary from centuries gone by, like the ones she'd watched during her lonely months drifting aimlessly on the Swift , this was life, her life, the heart-wrenching end of Berry's life.
Berry had died.
Didn't this Berry realize that?
Didn't Dr. Phillips understand the tragedy?
Perhaps it was hard for them. All this was new and exciting to them, alarming but not personally life-threatening. For Trixie, though, the tragedy was fresh. She wiped tears away, not wanting anyone to notice, but Diana noticed, Trixie could tell as their eyes met for a moment. Sorrow pulled her down like lead weights strapped around her neck and she sat back in the chair.
The holograph faded.
“That's the most complete sequence I can find,” Dr. Phillips said. “Nothing else plays out for more than a second or two.”
Anderson looked angry. His eyebrows were furrowed, his teeth clenched. Trixie wasn't sure if he was mad at her, and she wondered if he blamed her for the death of Berry.
Dr. Phillips spun her hands in the air above the desktop, her fingers adroit as they punched at the soft glowing holographic console beneath the memory image.
To Trixie, her motion was incomprehensible. The flicker of her fingers was matched by the flicker of memories as the computer responded to her deft touch.
Berry was suspended in the force field again, only this time Trixie was looking back at him from above. His body appeared brutish, his brow was extended while his jaw and cheekbones were sharply defined.
The memories were erratic, flicking between several different compositions, showing Berry in a variety of states. In some, body hair blanketed his skin and his features were coarse, his muscles thick and dense. In others he looked somewhat normal, but not quite. In all of them he appeared to be in torment.
“They seem to be able to manipulate organic material at a cellular level, altering the genome and its protein code responses,” Dr. Phillips said. “This is a level of bioengineering we cannot even begin to comprehend. This, it seems, is the only logical explanation for her existence.”
Images continued to flash and the holographic reconstructions switched to scenes with Trixie and Berry inside the Swift , with them eating, laughing, digging through the bulkhead for equipment and going to the toilet.
It's too easy...
We go?
We can't go, Babe. Not just yet... It's a trap... If we run, we risk everything...
“He knew,” Diana said.
Trixie's memory flickered, switching back and forth between images of Berry standing there smiling, eating a protein bar and the stark empty bulkhead beside the airlock.
The holograph stuttered, struggling to separate out the overlapping images—one of Berry laughing, smiling, and the next of the desolate interior of the Swift . No one needed to be told why. The haunted image resonated in the empty look in her eyes. This was Trixie struggling under the weight of grief she felt from Berry's loss. He looked so naturally happy in those few moments on the Swift . He'd let down his guard for a few seconds, forgetting about the danger that surrounded them, and simply enjoyed Trixie's presence. She could see that. Looking back, it was clear he relished those few seconds as much as she did. They were a brief respite from the horror that surrounded them.
“What else is there?” Anderson asked, breaking the silence.
“There is a reference to masters stuck in her mind,” Dr. Phillips said.
“Is this another name for the thinkers?” Berry asked.
“No.”
Trixie couldn't bring herself to say much more than that. She was struggling not to break down in front of them. She wanted to run, to hide, to do anything to make this nightmare go away. It had been months, but seeing these images reopened old wounds, and she felt as raw and hurt as the day Berry died.
“Did you see them? The masters?”
“No.”
Dr. Phillips brought up another holographic projection. This time, Trixie faced off against a thinker considerably larger than her. The alien creature seemed frightened, almost cowering as Trixie lunged toward it.
Workers scattered in front of her. The soft glow from around their shells flickered as she moved forward, like birds taking flight before a cat.
Flashes of light shone down through the darkened tunnel, catching the edges of knotted roots, highlighting the tangle of limbs and branches that made up the twisting, winding passageway.
Explosions deep in the heart of the alien craft were tearing it apart. Fires raged down several passages to the side, casting a ghostly flicker of light into the tunnel.
“Look at that,” Dr. Phillips said. “The thinker opposing Trixie is afraid of her, but he will not let her pass. Why?”
“Do you know?” Diana asked Trixie. The kindness in her voice soothed Trixie.
“No.”
“It's stalling,” Anderson said. “It's not prepared to take her on, but it's trying to delay her. It's as though it's waiting for something, for someone.”
“But who?” Berry asked. “Masters?”
“Maybe,” Diana said. “Or maybe it's called for backup and is waiting for more thinkers.”
In the hologram, they could see Trixie down on her knees, her arms out in front of her as she struggled to hold herself up.
“Something is wrong,” Berry said.
Suddenly, the holograph swung around and Trixie saw herself hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel. Gravity gyrated, swirling around her, tossing her body around like a rag doll as she clung desperately to the roots to avoid being flung about the passage.
Fires flickered in the distance, casting long shadows down the darkened tunnel.
“Whatever skulduggery they've devised to manipulate gravity must be failing at this point,” Berry said. “From the footage taken by the Swift , we know the ship was torn apart. This must be the beginning of its death throes.”
The tunnel turned into a deep, dark well falling away beneath Trixie's feet, and then the memory ended.
“Can you back that up?” Anderson asked. “There's one thing that bothers me about this footage.”
“Just one?” Diana asked, a hint of surprise in her voice.
The holographic display rewound a few seconds and slowly moved forward again, showing Trixie's bare feet dangling above the gaping tunnel below her. Gravity had aligned vertically, turning what had been a winding passageway into what looked like a deep well. A dull yellow glow illuminated a ledge in the distance, hundreds of feet below her. A dark shape fell past her.
“Dead thinker,” Trixie said.
“It's not that,” Anderson said, watching closely as the memory faded. “Look. There! Can you enhance that?”
Dr. Phillips rewound and replayed the holograph again, enlarging the distant view just as the body of the dead thinker fell.
Creatures were scrambling up the sides of the tunnel. In the soft light, they were barely visible, easily mistaken for shadows in the flickering, fading light.
“What are they?” Diana asked.
Trixie shrugged. She didn't know.
“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Dr. Phillips asked.
“Yep,” Anderson said.
Diana had turned around in her seat, looking intently at Anderson. “Masters?”
“No,” he began. “There's something else missing from their social structure. Something we haven't seen in any of her other memories.”
“Look at the size,” Dr. Phillips said. “They're an intermediate. Something between the workers on one end of the scale and thinkers at the other.”
“I don't understand,” Diana said. “What could they be?”
“Soldiers,” Anderson replied.
“Think about it,” Dr. Phillips said. “Their whole ecology is split along functional lines, thinkers and workers. Although those are broad categories, with plenty of diversity within them, they're missing something fundamental to any expansionist society, soldiers.
“And from biology, we know there should be a graduation in body sizes. Think about how nature diversifies and exploits a variety of niches. On Earth, we see huge variations in birds, from hummingbirds to the albatross, but you could line up all the graduated species spanning various niches in between them. We haven't seen that with the workers and thinkers. There's a gap. The workers are small, the thinkers are big. These things, though, fit right in the middle. They're not intermediaries in the evolutionary sense of having a common ancestor, but they are what we'd expect to see, something filling that mid-size niche.”
“But why soldiers?” Diana asked.
“The thinker was stalling,” Anderson said. “He wasn't waiting for more thinkers. Trixie had killed hundreds of thinkers in the vivisection chamber. He was waiting for security, for someone that could deal with her more effectively.”
“But why hadn't she run into soldiers before?” Diana asked, uttering the very question Trixie was thinking.
“From what I understand,” Anderson said. “Their original escape was a ruse. Berry knew that. He knew they were bait, that they were supposed to escape and lead them right to us. I suspect Trixie was just a distraction, something to confuse and disrupt his thinking, blur his reasoning and knock him off guard.”
Trixie sat forward sharply, not fully comprehending what Anderson was saying, but grasping at the edges of his reasoning.
“How do we know she isn't still part of a ruse?” Dr. Phillips asked. “I mean, we're trusting her. We're trusting the memories from her mind, but they could have been manufactured and implanted. It could be a double-bluff.”
“No,” Berry said, coming to Trixie's defense. “She destroyed their ship. We have independent records of that from the log files on the Swift . Whatever their reason was for creating her, she had her revenge.”
Trixie appreciated Berry's comments. She gave him a slight nod but he didn't respond.
“They outwitted themselves,” Anderson said. “I think they kept the soldiers in reserve so that it looked easy to escape. Then, when everything went pear-shaped, when their plan fell apart, they struggled to respond in time. For all their thinking, I don't think they ever thought Trixie would outsmart them and defeat them.”
Trixie felt a hint of pride, but she suppressed the natural urge to smile.
“I suspect they brought in the soldiers a fraction too late, and that particular thinker was stalling, trying to hold out until they arrived,” Anderson said pointing at the faint outline of spindly creatures clambering up the walls hundreds of feet below the holographic image of Trixie.
“It tells us a lot,” he continued. “They've played their hand, shown us their cards.”
