Hadeishi saw that her eyes were merry with anticipation. “Show us what you plan to do, Chu-sa.”
WITHIN THE SUNFLOWER
The Moulins crept forward through the dark, exterior floods stabbing into a colossal empty space. Hints of enormous structures wreathed in shadow ghosted by on either side. On the bridge, Gretchen had her eyes half closed, fingers drifting lightly across her console. The oliohuiqui she’d taken was burning at the back of her throat, and the flood of data populating her v-displays had coalesced in her perception, becoming a fluid thing, shifting and deforming with each passing moment, as more and more information flowed into the array of comps. Dozens of passageways branched off in all directions as they moved, but only one thread through the maze seemed proper to her. If pressed, she would have said the volume of the channel they were following felt the most used, though nothing obvious about the ranks of triliths they passed would have indicated this.
“Six hundred k from the entrance now,” the pilot said quietly. “How deep are we g-”
“As deep as necessary,” Xochitl snapped. His mood, if possible, had worsened while sitting in the darkness at the back of the bridge. He doesn’t like it that Europeans are handling the ship. Gretchen clearly felt the nervous tension throbbing in the Prince, as though a wire were being twisted tighter and tighter around some fulcrum. His discomfort was now beginning to cause her physical pain.
Xochitl stirred, glaring accusingly at Anderssen. “We have passed several hundred thousand openings into the structure, Swede. Why haven’t we stopped?”
Though her attention was focused far from the Prince, after a lengthy pause Gretchen remembered to reply: “None of them are suitable.”
“How so?” The Prince brought up the internal map of the structure being constructed by the sensors on the Navigator’s console. “We’ve passed numerous secondary openings-are these doors?-large enough for a dreadnaught to enter-how are they not suitable for our entry?”
“They are closed to us,” Gretchen said, attempting to smile reassuringly at him over her shoulder. The resulting expression was almost feral, for a wild, heedless light had come into her face. “We need just the right kind of way in… nothing fancy, Tlatocapilli. That would be dangerous.”
“And you can tell that which is dangerous and that which is not?” His attempt at sarcasm sounded shrill, for his voice was tight with fear.
“We are still alive, aren’t we?” Gretchen turned back to her console. Oh, what is this?
Illuminated by the Moulin ’s running lights, a constellation of new structures emerged from the darkness. Tall pylons ascended from pooled shadow below to disappear into equal indigo above. Between them, another of the structures which seemed to be a portal door had appeared: a triangular shape several hundred meters high, comprised of four smaller triangles. Each of the inner triangles contained a further inverted, and recessed, triangle. This arrangement, unlike many others they had passed, held a darker hue-almost night-black itself, but irregularly mottled.
Anderssen’s console flickered, all of the v-panes abruptly closing and then reopening again. She stiffened, feeling a flood of heat warm her chest, even through the z-suit and the equipment rig. The edges of the analysis displays on the console began to distort, the lettering transforming into the unintelligible glyphs which had overcome the Naniwa ’s navigational system during their transit of the Pinhole.
Uh-oh. Node 3^3 3 is connecting-but it’s not plugged in! Gretchen felt the pattern of her analysis matrices shifting. The pulsing back-and-forth of her comps and storage nodes shaded as well, starting to move faster-much faster than she could follow. Dreading what she might feel, Anderssen slipped her right hand under her jacket, fingertips brushing against the surface of the bronze block. It was very warm and vibrating faintly. She looked down and was stunned to see that a hot, golden glow was shining between her fingers. What the “Anderssen, what is that?” Xochitl had finally noticed the grouping of pylons.
“We are very close,” she managed to say. Lojtnant Piet, without even a look to Captain Locke, had turned the freighter towards the four-sided diamond. Their speed slowed, now the Moulins was inching along. The exterior floods angled forward, trying to illuminate the blackened surface. The beams played across the portal, but did not even generate a reflection, as though the material were drinking in the light.
Then a point of hard jewel-like radiance appeared at the center of the innermost diamond. A distinct collimating beam stabbed out and washed over the Moulins, causing the forward cameras to polarize, reducing their view to nothing but a scintillating white point. In Anderssen’s equipment rig, the bronze block stopped vibrating and went cold. Gretchen gasped in pain as her perceptual gestalt abruptly collapsed, leaving her blinking owlishly at her console, which had terminated all of the v-panes simultaneously.
Behind her, the Prince stiffened in alarm.
The vision overlay generated by Xochitl’s exo was awash with unknown and indecipherable datagrams and hieroglyphs. Voices were speaking in his mind in a lilting, singsong tongue like calling birds; but though the cadence of the sounds seemed terribly familiar he knew none of the words. Alarmed, he surged upward out of his shockchair. “What the-”
“A Gate opens before you,” said an unexpected voice. A seamed old hand, hard as bog oak, settled on the Prince’s shoulder and forced him back down. The Mexica looked up, astounded to see that Green Hummingbird-now clad in a Fleet z-suit-had slipped quietly into the back of the bridge. The dyspeptic face of the Hjogadim Sahane peered down over his shoulder, red-rimmed eyes staring accusingly at the Prince. The nauallis met Xochitl’s gaze with a serious expression. “I advise you not to enter this structure.”
“You would exhaust God’s patience, sorcerer.” The Prince threw aside the old Nahuatl’s arm and pushed up from his seat. “You do not command me! You serve the Empire and in this place I am-”
“It is my purpose, Tlatocapilli,” Hummingbird interrupted, “to keep humanity from harm-and this place is beyond our skill to use, our power to hold, and our intellect to understand. We must leave before we come to grief. Or worse, bring disaster home with us.”
“You threaten me?” Xochitl bit out the words, struggling to keep his temper.
The Prince’s exo had already summoned Cuauhhuehueh Koris and the marines, who now appeared in the hatchway. The Jaguar Knight ducked inside, shipgun leveled on Hummingbird’s back.
Sahane found himself surrounded by the marines, who were watching the alien warily, but they kept their distance. The Hjo licked his lips, long head darting from side to side.
Hummingbird affected no notice of the activity: “My duty to your father compels me to try and save your life.”
Xochitl drew his sidearm, thumbing off the safety. “Unwise choice, old man. You are utterly-”
“Lining up a new approach vector,” Gretchen’s voice cut in. She had ignored the Prince and the Judge and their spat, even the appearance of Sahane, instead watching the progress of the diamond-hard light which had traversed the hull. Now the radiance flickered out as swiftly as it had appeared, and the Navigator’s panel in front of her woke to life again. Now, however, all of the v-panes and controls were displaying the tight curlicues of the alien hieroglyphics which had come and gone from her vision over the past days.
Landing beacon locked, one of them suggested to her and, nodding in acknowledgment, Anderssen tapped the glyph. The nav system on the freighter kicked in, adjusting their approach. Piet started in alarm-then looked to the captain for guidance-his face tight with distress. Locke shook his head no, the movement barely visible even to Gretchen, who was seated only two meters away. Both men watched her intently and Gretchen suddenly tasted a little of their desire, which matched tone and color with hers.
Let us see what lies beyond, a memory echoed, bringing with it the smell of oiled wood and a perfume she’d last worn as an undergraduate. Beyond the door of the unopened tomb, beyond the rise of the next hill, within unplumbed space, beyond our conception. This is the fever which drives us to create, to innovate, to overcome.
Outside, the mottled black wall had divided into three parts, and each triangle receded from sight. Beyond, in a chamber whose comprehensible size-only a few hundred meters in each dimension-seemed puny and cramped,
