The Navigator, page 49
"I'm supposed to die down here. Cynax sent me here to die, didn't he? It's like that drunk on Mann said - I'm the last Khoi - the last one. He just wanted to get rid of me."
"I lack sufficient information to corroborate your conclusions."
Petal stared at BLUE-HUE for several minutes. Her mind was swimming in a sea of fury and absolute dread. She pictured herself tearing Cynax apart, ripping off each of its tentacles one by one.
The image didn't make her feel any better.
As she wallowed in misery, a random thought hit her. She realized she was still holding the nanite-kit cube. She clutched it even tighter.
"You have to follow my orders right?" Petal took a deep breath. "Cynax said you have to follow my orders. Is that true?"
"Yes. To a degree." BLUE-HUE crackled. "As long as your directives comply with Consortium protocols."
Petal held the nanite-kit cube up in front of BLUE-HUE, as if she was going to hand it to him.
"What is this?"
"That is a Sybian-manufactured nanite cube. K-Series, model # K103421."
"If I put this on Amanahora's reactor, it would give Cynax control over it. He could shut it down and destroy this city?"
"Presumably. The cube is a hacking device - a collection of inactive nanites. Upon release, those nanites will activate and will manually enter a selected system's hardware. They will then rewire that system, bypassing system security, to give any user unfettered access."
Petal tried to put on a tough face. "Where is Amanahora's reactor?"
"You still intend to grant Cynax system access? You do realize that if this city is destroyed, there will be no escape. Both you and I will be destroyed with it."
"Where is Amanahora's reactor?"
A row of dull blue lights on the floor switched on. They looked like a landing strip that went roughly one hundred feet off in front of Petal, before taking a sharp turn around a blind corner.
"Please follow the illuminated path. . ."
- 75-
Sejanus looked out at Smaaland's tidal bay. Near the edge of the bay, less than one hundred feet from the end of the docks was a small, oddly-shaped craft. It was floating dead in the water, in the choppy morning sea. From a distance, it looked like an impossibly large scallop shell.
When this strange scallop shell was first spotted, few of Smaaland's savage residents had taken notice, besides the island's senior longshoreman. That man, a grizzled, gray-haired Jan-Ju named Oncus, watched the strange shell, transfixed by its unnatural size, as the tide pushed it closer to the docks, toward him.
A small crowd of Jan-Jus soon gathered next to Oncus, straddling the pier. They peered out at the strange floating shell with greedy eyes, eager to scavenge whatever cargo might have been stowed away inside it.
A few of those assembled Jan-Jus hopped down into the cool sea, tip-toeing out into the bay, gliding through the choppy water, slowly making their way over to the floating shell. Before the shell reached a depth where any of the savages could stand, it popped open.
Oncus was still perched on the docks when the shell spread apart. He gasped as the top half shot up, with a loud click.
Inside of the scallop shell was a woman, huddled into a ball, taking the place of a giant pearl. She quickly sat up, looked out at the docks, and then gazed at her primitive mangrove surroundings. As her shell craft continued to glide to the flooded shore, she raised herself up to her knees, and then kept still, blinking at the sudden brightness.
"By the gods. . ." Oncus's jaw dropped, utterly gob smacked. He continued to ogle the woman in the scallop shell, watching the sea breeze flutter her brown hair and her ethereal, tin-foilish clothing.
The Jan-Jus who were down in the water backed away, white-faced.
"Clymene," Oncus mumbled. His mind raced at the incredible thought. He turned to the other Jan-Jus and began to shout, breathlessly. "Clymene has returned! It's Clymene! Come! Quick! It's Clymene! Clymene!"
"Clymene!" the other Jan-Jus chanted in an overawed chorus. They knelt down in the bay, bowing to the long-lost sea deity.
Sejanus had been hearing a petty civil case involving the theft of a net of fish when Oncus spotted the strange shell. He took little notice of it, beyond a casual, over-the-shoulder glance, until he heard the Jan-Jus in the bay chanting. He turned around in his seat and watched as his subjects prostrated themselves to a woman huddled inside of a scallop shell that seemed to be carved out of solid ivory.
The corners of Sejanus's mouth twitched up and down. He stood from the bench, hopped down from his hut into the omnipresent water, and then sloshed his way over to the docks.
When he walked past Oncus, the longshoreman tugged on the edge of his sealskin robes, eagerly.
"Your honor, Clymene has returned! The great day has come! Smaaland be blessed! The goddess has returned! It's Clymene!"
Sejanus shoved Oncus away, as if he was a mangy dog, and then proceeded down to the very edge of the dock. He reached the end of the pier just as the scallop shell was blown against it.
Sejanus looked down at the shell and the woman who was still kneeling inside it. He smiled when they made eye contact.
"Ms. Quill! I knew you would return to Smaaland - and so you have! And with so much pomp and pageantry!"
Quill shivered, freezing from the cool breeze. She stood up from her knees, preened her hair, and then faked a smile.
"Hello, Sejanus," she said in a forced, cheerful tone. "I'm back. . .and I'm not flotsam this time."
"That you are not, Ms. Quill - jetsam perhaps - such a curious craft." He studied her shell's foam-lined interior. "A giant mollusca carapace?"
"It's Khoi."
Sejanus held out his hand, and Quill latched onto it, allowing him to pull her up, onto the dock.
"Thank you." She teetered back and forth on the dock's edge, struggling to stand on her sea legs.
"Surely." Sejanus pinched her shirt, closely inspecting her shiny, alien clothing. "Where did you locate such unique apparel? And such unusual means of transit?"
"You won't believe this, but they're from Terra Australis Incognita."
"Ah." Sejanus rubbed his stubbly chin, tracing his mandible tattoo with his fingertips. "And what became of your rescuer - your traveling companion - the feral child - Petal?"
Quill looked past Sejanus, at the crowd of Jan-Jus who were kneeling before her. Everyone from the nearby, treetop village had come out of their huts to gawk at Quill, but none of them dared to look directly at her.
"Petal's in Amanahora."
"But of course. . ."
Quill took a few steps down the old wooden dock. As she approached Oncus, he slinked away, almost jumping off the pier to avoid getting too close to her. The crowd of Jan-Jus on shore backed up as well, sloshing their way through the knee-high water, continuously bowing like mandarins.
Quill looked back at Sejanus. He hadn't moved.
"Am I free to go? Am I still your prisoner?"
"My prisoner?" Sejanus motioned to the surrounding crowd with an irritated shrug. "You hath overawed my subjects. How could I re-incarcerate you now? You're Smaaland's matron deity."
The men and women peering down at Quill from the treetops continued to bow and chant, solemnly.
"Clymene. Praise to the goddess, Clymene."
Sejanus walked up behind Quill, grabbing her shoulders.
"You are free to do as you wish, young goddess." He nearly choked over the word. "But before you do - would you do the Court the honor of joining it for an official state dinner?"
Quill puckered her face. ". . .Okay. . .?"
Sejanus gently nudged Quill aside, and walked in front of her, so he was standing between her and the assembled crowd. He threw his arms out to the side, while leaning forward as if he'd been humbled.
"YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE!" he roared. He then snapped upright, and gestured to Quill, who was now cringing next to him. "The Court would like to herald the return of Clymene a.k.a Ms. Quill - via Hesperia - via the Northern Current - via Terra Australis Incognita. Smaaland - the Magical Forest - hereby extends to you a warm, winsome, and much delayed welcome. "
"Thank you," Quill stammered. She stared at Sejanus, picked up on his not-so-subtle cue, and then waved to the crowd. "Thank all of you?"
"AND NOW, our most dignified visitor, the ambassador of the great Khoiano, hath agreed to grace us with her attendance at an official Smaaland State Dinner, after which - I rest assured - she shall anoint our humble island with blessings of the Khoi and sanctify its most devout and pious citizenry."
"Hail Clymene!" the crowd of kneeling Jan-Jus thundered. "Hail the great goddess of the sea!"
"Hail," Sejanus muttered. He glanced over at Quill with a cold, piercing gaze.
Quill met his stare and nervously shirked. She was still freezing, and her muscles were sore from being balled up inside of the shell. She crept back, inching toward the edge of the dock. Before she was out of reach, Sejanus grabbed her hand, pulled it up to his mouth, and kissed it.
"You'd do well to more accurately play the part, Ms. Quill. You are a goddess here for only as long as they mistake you for the deity."
Quill nudged him aside. She curtseyed to the crowd, who again prostrated themselves to the point of dunking their faces into the ocean.
"And you're the Grand Barrister here for only as long as they mistake you for an actual attorney."
"Haha, how I hath missed you, Ms. Quill! There is no shrewder a foil, no lovelier a nemesis, and no more intellectually-able a sparing partner to the Court than yourself. Kudos to you on out-beguiling me, once again. You are my mirror in shrewd femininity."
Quill blushed. Her eyes sparkled. "Thank you. . ."
- 76-
Petal crept through the dark, twisted corridors of Amanahora as quietly as she could. All the lights in the dead city had been turned off by BLUE-HUE just after the Aii outbreak, and although the strange A.I. had switched a few of them back on for Petal to feel her way by, the majority of Amanahora was still black as night. Petal hadn't seen anything more of the city than a few gun-metal gray hallways and dreary, darkened staircases.
The Aii that infested Amanahora were hidden somewhere in the dark. Occasionally, Petal could hear sad groans echo through the walls, but she wasn't sure if these were Aii, or the sound of the submerged city's superstructure warping from the immense pressure of the ocean.
Petal tried to keep completely silent as she walked, fearing that even the softest squeak would be enough of a stimulus to wake the Aii from their decades' long slumber. When her boot tip snagged on the lip of a stair, causing her to tumble forward, her heart almost stopped from terror.
Petal froze in place on the cold, bare floor, too horrified to move. Condensation dripped down from the ceiling. In-between the taps of falling droplets, she could hear the noise of her fall echo throughout the dark structure.
The cold, dark place. . .this is my vision. . .
"Are you injured?" BLUE-HUE's projection shot out from a nearby wall.
"Shhhhhhhhh! The Aii will hear us!"
"There's no need to worry about reanimating the Aii. This structure has been disinfected."
"Disinfected?" Petal slowly stood up. She climbed a few more steps. "You can kill them?"
"I can disinfect small areas of the city for a short amount of time. After the Aii were first introduced into Amanahora, I was able to keep a majority of the city's residents alive for several months by isolating and purging any areas of contamination. Sadly, the Aii's microscopic size, hardiness, and rapid speed of propagation eventually overwhelmed my quarantine efforts, leading to the untimely death of. . .well. . .everyone."
"Who introduced the Aii to Amanahora? Someone brought Aii down here on purpose?"
BLUE-HUE flickered in and out.
"A few samples of Aii were scraped off the exterior of the Tear Drop sky lab and brought down to Amanahora for scientific analysis-"
"We brought this on ourselves? This was our fault?"
"Not at all. The contamination of Amanahora was inadvertent."
Petal bit her lip. "How much further is it to the reactor?"
"You are less than two thousand feet from your destination - though much of the way is vertical. Why don't you take a look for yourself?"
A row of tiny lights on the wall next to Petal lit up, framing a previously opaque wall panel.
Petal stared through the panel. It was a one-way glass window.
"I will activate ten percent of the city's lights to allow you to find your way. Your destination is tower eleven. The tower shaped like a cetan."
Petal could barely make out the large city square, but could tell it was the same area she'd seen in her vision on the trell. The streets lights below slowly switched on, illuminating a jumbled skyline of golden high-rises and silver promenades, all linked together by a twisting tram system.
Petal had no idea what a cetan was or what one might look like. She studied the shapes of the buildings to try and figure it out by process of elimination.
One tower was capped with the head of a shark, another looked like a man-o-war jelly, and another a sea serpent. As her eyes swept across the eerie skyline and the crackling blue dome above, something clicked in Petal's mind. She zeroed in on a structure that lay in the center of the square. It was shaped like a centaur - except it was a combination of a man and a whale instead of a man and a horse. That high-rise's giant rear fluke fed into the tram lines, and its androgynous, humanoid head scraped against Amanahora's electric blue ceiling.
"That one, right?" Petal tapped her finger against the window glass. A dark, gray cloud wafted through the city square and slowly settled on every surface.
"I cannot determine which structure you are gesturing to. Tower eleven is in the center of Atawhunta Square. It is the tallest structure visible from this vantage. I am surprised you do not remember it."
"What is that dust cloud? How is it moving? There's wind down here?"
"What you've referred to as a 'dust cloud' is actually a deadly, regolith-like mixture of primitive Aii spores and slightly more developed Aii-microorganisms."
"Aii?" Petal watched the gray Aii dust swirl around the square. "They didn't look like that on the Tear Drop. They're awake and. . .moving?"
"Whenever the Aii accrete into an appreciable size, I purge them. Most of the Aii in Amanahora are thus in this primitive, non-bonded state. This is the state the Aii were in when the last of Amanahora's residents were felled; a mobile, airborne infection. Similar to a fungus."
"How do I make it to that tower? Is there a tunnel or something?"
"Negative. You must walk through the square. At the exit of this structure, on the right hand wall, you will find a compartment which holds several re-breathing apparatuses - put there in case of an atmospheric imbalance or an airborne hazard such as this one."
"I have to walk through them? Won't they get on my skin and in my eyes?"
"Each re-breathing apparatus is attached to a set of protective eyewear. Once you are inside of tower eleven, I will douse you with an antiseptic spray to prevent skin-born infection."
"You're sure I'll be safe?"
"The likelihood of the airborne infection of a properly protected Khoi is one in one hundred."
"So there's still a chance?"
"There's always a chance of any event," BLUE-HUE crackled. "I deal in probabilities."
"When would I know if I've been infected?"
"Aii would begin propagating inside of your body once introduced. You would be consumed internally over the course of two to three hours. This would manifest itself to you as non-localized pain, tremors, bleeding from the ears, nose, and eyes, generalized neuropathy, diarrhea, and vomiting."
"Okay." Petal felt a pit form in her stomach. "I - I guess I'm ready. . ."
At BLUE-HUE's direction, Petal continued forward, to the top of the staircase. Once she reached its summit, BLUE-HUE illuminated a strip of lights on the floor - a twinkling path that stretched down a long, windowed skywalk over to another building.
Petal slowly walked across the dark skywalk, glancing out the windows on either side, down at the city and its roving Aii clouds.
Amanahora looked like it had been abandoned for centuries, even though it'd only been ten years. The Aii leached the paint off its buildings' facades and had steadily eroded the city's decorative brickwork and statuary. Most of the buildings now looked sandblasted and cracked. The statues were amorphous, globular lumps of twisted metal. Everything was derelict and foreboding. The Aii were still digesting Amanahora slowly, blowing in and out of its lonely, crumbling structures ceaselessly, relentlessly.
