The Genetic Imperative Page 14

  “Yes. We are trained for that.”

  The cocky quip from another soldier would have made him bristle, but her pixie grin made the comment endearing.

  “Good work then.”

  She offered the smile again. He turned away attempting to conceal her impact.

  “Couldn’t sleep, eh?”

  He nodded regret.

  “Sergeant Nichols called while I was in transit from New Mexico. I’m sorry your introduction to the Unit was not smooth. The oversight is mine and I apologize. I hope this isn’t the reason for your insomnia.”

  “Gotta' be honest; yes, it is,” Arnold confessed.

  “Again, you have my regrets. I will fix this in the morning. I’m calling a meeting for zero nine hundred. We’re going to accelerate your orientation. You come to us at an interesting time.”

  With that, she did not smile, and her eyes implied something more serious. Arnold gave silent acknowledgment.

  They sat a while and looked through the kitchen window into the woods. The summer night breeze sauntered in the branches, creating shadows that played on the grass. They surprised each other when the moonlight woods produced a simultaneous relaxed sigh. They both pretended not to notice.

  “The woods are nice here. The place is a good retreat,” Otema observed.

  A few minutes later, she excused herself understandably with the confession that she was tired from her military transport from New Mexico, to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, followed by a forty-five-minute drive to that moonlit kitchen.

  “Good night,” she said, and went off to rest without looking back.

  Arnold purposely didn’t watch her leave. It had been a very long time since he felt such a sudden and intense attraction. She was gorgeous and sharp, but they worked together and she outranked him. The formula was a bit off. He gave a light curse against silly, stupid dumb luck and made plans to once again abandon attraction in the name of his job. He sipped his iced tea and thought to himself how it was sometimes unfortunate to be a professional.

  Chapter 8: Homesphere, Whispers

  Nina fell asleep during the train ride. She woke to a slight vibration in the window against her head. Their train segment split off from a main horizontal artery and rounded a down-curve to join a secondary vertical tube. A lurch and their segment connected with a longer train. She looked up just as the gravity plane shifted to vertical. The train dove straight down for the last leg of their journey. Direct descents like this meant they would drop at least twenty kilometers. Nina was surprised to understand they were this deep beneath the surface. Their car was quiet and nearly empty.

  “How long was I out?” Nina asked. A groggy stretching of her arms produced a series of pops from her spine. The nap was wonderful.

  “You were out solid for the past four transitions.”

  “Four? How long is that?”

  “Four hours.”

  “Hours? I thought you said Cordelia’s place.”

  “I did. You’ve been gone quite a while. She is first Colonel now in Cultural Branch, Intelligence Division.”

  “Cultural branch…” Nina said. She was confused.

  Cordelia had been an officer in Light Infantry Combat Section the last time they met.

  “Infantry’s always been flexible. The division is large and growing larger. It’s easier now than ever for Light Infantry to shift vocation.”

  That made sense to Nina. She thought it would be interesting to speak with Cordelia again. She was very smart and always had interesting stories to tell about her campaigns. The Light Infantry Division was used for mass attacks and general actions to eliminate Silicoid infection as well as occupying and pacifying operations.

  In the best case scenarios, the Advocates could make contact with Humanoid societies sometimes as much as a century before Silicoid invasion. Close contact with suitable Humanoid Civilizations to assist in defense was a function of some sections of Light Infantry. Of course, this was only necessary in cases where the local populations must be made aware of the Silicoid threat.

  The ideal scenario was to have no contact with the client species at all. The Advocates eliminate a Silicoid threat, sentient life is preserved, and the civilization never knows. In the worst case scenario, the Silicoid infection is already underway, and Advocate contact becomes a necessity. Where the civilizations are space-faring, or Advanced enough technologically, contact became unavoidable and the results the same. In all these cases, the Light Infantry Division was the main tool. They were by far the largest single division of the Advocate Race. The wide range of the work they did demanded a dizzying array of skills, abilities, and specialties. They often found it necessary to help rebuild a Humanoid civilization and sometimes to keep civilizations from destroying themselves.

  “So where are we, and where are we going?” Nina asked.

  She couldn’t place the tunnels. The rock was mostly black igneous with veins of rust-red from iron and a marbling of green copper. She could tell at least that they were in the deep crust.

  “We’re about twenty kilometers down and about eight hundred south of central district, just below the equator.”

  “Some long trip you’re taking me on.”

  “It will be worth it. Higher rank has its privilege. It’s a nice community away from…” Chanise trailed off, “certain pressures.”

  They sat quietly and the train stopped three more times to allow a few soldiers to board and depart. The longest vertical descent was over, but they still traveled steadily downward through isolated caverns. Soldiers arrived in groups no larger than four, and most of them were Intelligence Division or Infantry.

  They finally pulled into a modest platform. There were no murals of battles past or mural of great Advocate soldiers or leaders. Absent were the usual carvings and artifacts from far-off worlds. There weren’t even any terrariums that soldiers near retirement age were encouraged to maintain as they neared their end. Stranger still was that the station and the tunnel that led up to it looked new. Looking behind her as they left the platform, she noticed the embedded propulsion pads and the power strips connecting them were farther apart in series than normal. This clearly indicated new style infrastructure.

  Access to the domestic chamber was via a long, wide, winding staircase that climbed about ten meters before opening up on a platform cantilevered out from the chamber wall. The cavern was a gigantic, egg-shaped space about one hundred fifty meters in diameter at the wide portion below, and about a hundred meters at the center. The height had to be something close to three hundred meters. The entire upper eighth of the dome section was a spiral of embedded lightcasters that focused and projected throughout the chamber.

  As it was late evening, the lighting was set to a warm candlelight. The spiral walkway started at the train platform exit and stood out about four meters from the cavern wall. It ran at a five-degree grade around the entire cavern nearly to the lighting dome. Here and there, impossibly long, drooping cable bridges spanned the cavern between sections of the walkway. They looked improvised, and the angles made them look difficult to traverse.

  At first, Nina thought the square railing at the edge of the walkway was hovering above the surface near waist height. She soon realized that it was supported by an extremely thin and seamless vertical wall of transparent crystal. Nina was awestruck by the brilliant engineering. As they began to walk, the railing glowed warmly and projected a diffuse pool of soft yellow light around their feet. When they moved closer to the railing, Nina saw that, about twenty meters below the spiral deck, the entire bowl of the chamber floor contained a series of lush gardens with a pond in the center. The garden was crisscrossed with walking paths and dotted with benches and carved-out boulders that served as rough gazebos. The gardens gave the chamber its fertile smell and rich air.

  The wall of the chamber was of the same black basalt stone as the tunnels but with wider veins of copper and iron that were oxidized to dark green and deep red. The walkway itself was fo
rmed from the more standard gray structural stone alloy as trains, drop pods and other machinery. Nina looked up as they strolled casually along and saw the path here and there light the footsteps of other walkers. The chamber was filled with white trails of soft light moving up and down the spiral.

  “This is beautiful,” Nina declared.

  Her heart clenched at the gorgeous sights. For the first time in months, she felt unburdened. All they had to do was experience the beauty of this place.

  As they made their way around the spiral, doorways appeared at various intervals and different heights. Some were formed even with the walkway floor, while others had one or a few stone steps leading up to them. Some doorways were arches, others square or round. Some looked hinged while others were clearly pocket doors or irises.

  “What is this place?” Nina asked. She grew incredulous. “I’ve never seen living chambers like this.”

  “That’s because there are no other living chambers like this. It’s new.”

  “I thought all construction was long since stopped. How is this possible, especially with the escalation. Where did the material and labor come from?”

  Chanise didn’t answer for a while. Nina couldn’t tell what she was considering, but a thoughtful look spread across her face. Was Chanise avoiding the question? Did she know the answer? Was she making up some lie? It was hard for Nina to tell. She hated the overall sense of doubt that nagged her since the Third Arm.

  “Isn’t it enough just to enjoy? Do you see these doors here?” she said, gesturing to the medley of varying portal shapes. “Behind each one, a Warrior has carved out living space. Mostly as collectives, but some created their own spaces by themselves, with very little equipment or instruction. They used things salvaged or items built themselves.”

  Nina thought about her own dismal storage closet of a living chamber. It was located ten kilometers beneath the main administrative hub of Central District. It waited for her now in a massive gray chamber of massive gray rectangles, a box among boxes left behind twenty-five years ago. She’d never thought of it until returning from the Third Arm. All the little things she’d collected over the years, what little bits of happy memories she managed to hang on to, were left in that gray box, sometimes for more than a decade at a stretch.

  She would visit those mementos for a few months, see her friends again, and then a few days later, she would be on the other side of the galaxy waiting to hurtle into some unknown fate. She never thought about the possibility of not seeing her chamber again. Now that she grasped this as a greater reality, it bothered her in a way she could not quite articulate. Her things were there. Those things somehow felt like parts of her.

  “They might only get to use their chambers for a few months or years, then be gone for decades,” Nina said, voice ringing with objection.

  “Yes. And that would be a few months to enjoy something built for them and by them, for no other purpose than to enjoy life when they can.”

  “This is new thinking,” Nina said simply.

  Only a few hours ago, Nina was lost to the thought of Warriors being able to enjoy their lives on their own terms. It was somehow harder for her to grasp now that she saw soldiers actually doing it. Seeing these ideas carried out somehow made her uncomfortable.

  “Nina, I think these ideas are not new thinking to you.”

  They let that sit between them for a while as they climbed. They passed an occasional set of soldiers sitting on benches formed from the walls. Engineers would never build like this in a formal chamber. She thought back to her afternoon in the Great Dome. The architecture in the egg chamber spoke to individual purpose. It was radically different.

  They climbed the spiral walkway for a while before Chanise turned to one of the doorways. They were about half way up on the chamber wall and almost opposite the train platform far below. Nina leaned over the railing to look down and saw soldiers strolling in the garden more than a hundred meters below. She saw from here that the garden was also arranged in a spiral formed of lush topiary.

  The plain door opened smoothly. Light and sound spilled out. It hit Nina like another wall, and she was suddenly apprehensive. Voices laughed, conversed, and a few shouted from what was possibly a passionate argument or a funny story. She was unsure whether she wanted to be part of this. Chanise confronted her hesitation and stepped over once again to be the big sister.

  With Chanise’s arm around her shoulders, Nina didn’t have much choice. They stepped through the doorway and into a vestibule full of abandoned boots and sandals where they removed their own footwear. Nina wondered how she would find her sandals again. A curtain formed from strings of round sea creature shells separated the vestibule from the living chamber. Nina could make out vague body shapes and colors filtered through the semi-transparent beads. She stood there shoeless like a nervous cadet at her first assembly. Chanise grabbed her wrist and gently pulled her past the veil of shells.

  They stepped down three short, wide stairs that curved around the wide oval entryway to a large living room. The room resembled the chamber itself but the egg shape here was squashed and set on its side so that the living room floor was a gentle concave. The narrow end of the egg changed into a circular opening too dark for Nina to see. The wide end of the egg became another oval opening arrived to by another set of curved stairs. That section opened to another room nearly as large as the living room.

  What struck Nina most were all the people. There must have been sixty warriors or more, all in casual robes and all with either food or drink in hand. Heat came to Nina’s face and her breath grew short and quick. It seemed that everyone in the room was looking at her. Her head darted quickly left and right. Nobody turned to meet her looks, but she still felt eyes touching her, pushing her back. Chanise stepped in front of her to block the view.

  “Believe me, I know what you’re feeling right now,” Her hands gripped Nina’s upper arms firmly. They were solid and strong against the tightening muscle. “It is very real, but so is this. I’m going to step away, and you are going to cross that room to where the food is and you’re going to eat. Is that understood?”

  The command was clear but delivered with a soft voice and a slight musical lilt. The voice was calming, and Nina followed its order. She cast nervous glances over her shoulders as she passed. The eyes were everywhere, and voices sounded sharp and prickly to her ears. Nobody seemed to heed the new arrival, but Nina did not experience it that way. She crossed what seemed like a massive divide to reach the broad end of the living room where three short steps took her to a large kitchen area.

  The back wall of the kitchen was carved out at waist level about a meter deep and half as tall. Illumination strips built into its ceiling revealed the entire length was laid out with more food than Nina thought she’d ever seen in one place. She recognized meats, fish, fruits and vegetables from at least a dozen planets. She began to forget the imagined eyes following her. Chanise was beside her with a flat, thin stone board piled with edible. She thrust it at Nina who accepted it reflexively.

  “There you are, Captain Nina of Generation Gaav, Range Division Soldier in service of the Queen,” Chanise said with mock formality, “Take this food in the courage of your kind and destroy it!” she commanded. She was on a rip and growing louder. Eyes did begin to turn to them then, but the laughter beginning to well up in Nina eclipsed them.

  “Take this food with all the fury in your teeth and decimate it! I command this!” Chanise shouted.

  Cheers erupted from fellow soldiers in the kitchen. Fists raised around her and hands clapped Nina’s back. Someone thrust a large mug of wine in her hand and she was suddenly laughing hysterically at the theatrical comedy. She raised her mug, still laughing but managed to pause long enough to take three large gulps from it. The wine was not nutritional. Her head spun immediately.

  They took a seat on the end of the low stairs to the kitchen and dug into the plate. Nina abandoned her wine and ended up eating half the plate b
efore Chanise got started.

  “I see you bear your orders dutifully,” came a voice over her right shoulder. She turned, looked up and saw a short, slight warrior wearing a colorful gown made from layers of sheer, flowing fabric. Cordelia looked on with a wry smile. Nina stood, forgetting about the food and Chanise managed to catch the board before it fell to the floor.

  “I am so glad to see you, but so hungry! We have plenty for you, Nina. Please enjoy.”

  Nina could only clasp Cordelia’s wrist and smile in gratitude. She was thrilled to see a familiar face. Nina finished her first mug of wine and polished off the rest of the food in amicable silence. She stood and wandered through the room, here and there exchanging casual greetings with fellow warriors.

  She made her way to the concave living room and settled down with another mug of wine to a large, body-sized orange pillow. Whatever filled it made a hushing sound and she leaned her back into it. The surface was shiny and a bit sticky on her skin. It seemed to be made from some synthetic material. She noticed that it was built from sections stitched together with very even intervals of thread. It looked like it was sewn with a machine, but she found the construction crude. It was very different from the textiles of home, which were grown seamlessly in carefully calibrated energy matrices molecule by precise molecule. Nina’s obvious curiosity drew a response from the soldier sitting in a similar blue pillow beside her.

  “That is from Earth,” she said casually. Nina froze. Earth. An artifact from a planet on perpetual quarantine except for once every five hundred years. This artifact she so casually lounged on must be incredibly rare. “And that long thing over there with the wood legs. Also from Earth. A table.”

  Nina rounded on the soldier with wide, shocked eyes.

  “Most of the furniture here is from Earth,” She stated with the same conversational tone, then just as abruptly stood with an empty cup. She drifted through the crowd to the wine. Cordelia filled the empty seat a moment later. She handed Nina a full cup and sipped from one of her own.