Always in the service of They Who Pass.
Call the intelligent clouds of dusty plasma the Radiants.
CHAPTER FIVE
Carol's eyes opened, gummy and blurred. Above, blue sky. She didn't believe it.
Carol sat up, rubbed her eyes. The view did not change.
She and Bruno were lying on a flat open area, on some thick ground cover. Like grass, though greener than any Terran grass. An unnatural green. Purplish blue sky stretched above them, speckled with delicate gossamer clouds. Carol stared in amazement, wordless.
The air smelled fresh and antiseptic, with a clean tang of ozone. A breeze touched her arms like the delicate brush of soothing fingers. It was so quiet that Carol could hear her heart beat.
No signs of the weird aliens, kzinti, or even of the fact that they had been locked in battle just a few moments before.
All Carol could remember was losing the suit commlink with Bruno in a snarl of static. Then nothing until she woke up here. Carol turned her head, stretching.
Somehow, behind them, the main airlock to Dolittle hung in midair. The rest of the ship was not there, however. One more impossibility. They seemed to be alone.
Carol rose easily to her feet. Too easily, she realized. She felt better than she had in many months, in years. She walked over to Bruno, and checked over his vital signs. He appeared to be sleeping deeply. She shook him gently awake.
“What?” Bruno began, shaking his head, then stopped in surprise as his eyes opened. He looked around, confused. Then he recognized Carol and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
“I thought I was dead,” he whispered.
“So did I.”
His confused frown deepened as Carol helped him to his feet.
“Don't ask me,” she told him as he looked around. “Unless you believe in heaven?”
Bruno stooped down and pulled up a small tuft of the dark green ground cover. He showed her the ten-lobed leaflets, and the crimson roots that moved gently while she watched.
“I doubt,” Bruno said softly, “that heaven is sowed with extraterrestrial species of plant life.”
“How nice that you are so sure.”
Carol followed Bruno as he walked toward the magically suspended main airlock of Dolittle. He patted the empty air above and to either side of the metal door, and snorted in satisfaction.
“Try it,” he invited.
Carol found that the airlock door seemed to be set in an invisible wall. The wall didn't feel hot or cold, like metal or plastic or stone. It was a hard, sharply defined barrier that they merely could not see. Except for the fact that heat conduction seemed perfect, it might have been optical diamond. The grassy plains beyond the wall were doubtless illusory, intended to give the impression of greater open space within their… cage.
Working together, she and Bruno quickly determined that their… yard was in fact about two hundred meters across, bounded by curving walls of invisible material. Dolittle clearly abutted it, with only the main airlock permitted to penetrate the force-wall.
The airlock opened normally, and they found Dolittle complete inside. Intact, though none of the sensory net or computer systems responded to commands. There were plenty of supplies still. They both noticed and commented on the one thing out of place: Dolittle was spotless, not as they had left it.
Carol stepped outside the spacecraft, back onto the too-green lawn. Soon Bruno joined her. They watched the ersatz clouds for a time, enjoying the quiet despite themselves.
It was good to breathe what smelled and felt like fresh air, especially after years of recycler stink.
“So,” Bruno said finally, “I guess we just wait. Like before.”
Carol was considering suggesting to Bruno an interesting way to just wait when she heard someone clearing his throat behind them. They both leaped to their feet and whirled around.
It was then that Carol rethought her joke about religion, and decided that she didn't have a sense of humor after all.
Before them stood Colonel Buford Early.
Carol froze. Early looked precisely as she remembered him from their last briefing. His teeth were gleaming white, clearly prosthetic in his seamed and ageless face; his uniform was spotless. There was even the familiar arrogant twinkle in the old, old eyes.
“Bruno, son,” Early said in an upbeat tone that was bizarrely inappropriate to their present circumstances. “And the lovely Captain Faulk. The pleasure is mine, entirely.”
She looked over at Bruno, who stood there, mouth open. Carol knew that Bruno saw Early as something of a father figure. She elbowed him hard to snap him out of it.
“Colonel Early,” Carol said evenly, “could you please tell us how you came to be here?” She paused, then added more plaintively than she had intended, “And precisely where 'here' is?”
Early's expression did not change. His smile was fixed, mindlessly benevolent. His words came out strangely, in bursts. “It is important to relax, to take things one step at a time. To think. Proper channels of communication are necessary. So many errors are made through hasty conclusions. Too much information often leads to confusion, and ill action. Would you not agree, Bruno?” Each sentence fragment sounded subtly different in tone from the last.
“Carol?” Bruno whispered. Carol was glad to see that Bruno saw the simulacrum for what it was.
“Humor it,” she murmured back.
Bruno straightened his shoulders. “Quite right, Colonel Early. But how goes the war against the kzin?”
Again, Early's face did not change. The relentlessly upbeat grin stayed in place.
“War is an evil. Yet sometimes an evil is necessary to preserve a greater good. Death is tragedy. Kzin are scream-and-leaping ratcats. Their strategies are improving.”
Carol scowled. “That isn't even a good imitation Early,” she whispered as the figure in front of them continued to mix and match platitudes.
“Loud and clear,” Bruno replied. “Those are just comments and speeches of Early's, cobbled together in response to questions we are asking.”
“Are you now calm?” the Early-thing asked them brightly. “Calmness is the first requirement for debriefing.”
Carol casually pulled a stylus from her coverall pocket, and tossed it underhand at the replica of Buford Early.
The figure made no effort to catch it. The stylus passed through and landed on the grass behind.
A distortion band started at the bottom of the figure's boots, and shimmied up and through its body.
“A lack of trust is deplorable,” the perfect replica of Early said with the same unchanging smile. “Misunderstandings abound. Trust is fundamental.”
“A hologram. Good, too,” Bruno said.
Carol nodded, then walked directly through the projected figure and picked up her stylus, replacing it in her coverall pocket. She walked back through the hologram to return to Bruno's side.
The replica of Buford Early vanished.
Carol looked up into the purple false sky, and spoke calmly.
“Show yourself, or speak to us.”
A voice spoke from all around them, still in Early's tones.
Sorrow mine.
“Excuse me?” Carol asked, confused.
“I think that they're apologizing,” Bruno whispered in her ear.
Bruno-entity correct. I/We intend null upset, null confusion. Attempt calm failure. Accept.
It was very strange to hear such odd words in Early's familiar voice.
“Why do you use Buford Early as a model?” Bruno asked the air around them.