The Marriage of the Living Dark

WHITE SPACE

Four probes had gone in with the boys, two ahead, two behind, and the bank of screens was divided into four, so that each image lay across a section of four by four screens. At the top left, Daniel, crouched in the narrow tunnel, his visor lit, so that one could see his face in the darkness, moving slowly forward. To the right of that, the screens showed Aidan, also crouching, but seen from behind as he followed his friend in; and beneath that image, that of Ju Dun, standing upright, his much smaller figure fitted neatly into the circle of the tunnel.

Only one of the quadrants was dark. In that left-hand section of the screens - directly beneath the figure of Daniel -something moved, a shadow among the shadows.

“Do you think he knows?” DeVore asked. “Do you think he understands it yet?” Dublanc, standing just behind him, answered hesitantly, his own misunderstanding clear. “No. I ... I think he’s still guessing.” “He’s afraid now.”

“Yes.”

It was true. You could see it in his eyes. So this was true bravery.

Yes, or foolhardiness.

“Are you a gambling man, Dublanc?”

“Master?”

DeVore turned and looked at him. “What would you say his chances were of getting out?”

“Not good.”

Again, true. But Daniel was an expert at beating the odds. A genuine survivor.

And he had Aidan at his back, so ...

“You want to wager with me?”

The thought of it shocked Dublanc. Wager with DeVore?

“Don’t you think ...?”

“I think he’s going to make it,” DeVore said, interrupting him. “I think that whatever we throw at him, he’ll walk through it, or round it, or over it Don’t you?”

Part of Dublanc agreed. But then, he also knew what Daniel was walking into. And even Daniel would be hard pressed to survive that”A hundred yuan he doesn’t,” he heard himself say.

“Make it five,” DeVore said.

He swallowed, then nodded his head. Five hundred yuan. Shit! It would clear him out.

Up on the screen, Daniel moved slowly forward, into the darkness of the nest

The dart came whistling out of the dark. Daniel heard it and reacted instinctively, throwing himself to the side, his suit thudding against the tunnel wall.

There was a sharp crack just behind him, but there was no time to look. From that same impenetrable darkness came a clicking and a whistling and a fluttering rush of wings.

Daniel hit the pad on his arm, flooding the tunnel ahead of him with light from the lamp on his helmet.

And felt his stomach fall away ...

Forty, maybe fifty, metres down the tunnel, a seething solid wall of glittering eyes and beaks and claws approached steadily like a great plug of living hostility being pushed up out of the darkness.

And even as he opened fire, Daniel understood. Corruption. He was being tutored in the reality of corruption, of the living darkness that lay behind the light, of the unending physical nightmare of existence. In the end this was all there was. All else was surface. The knowledge seemed to sap his will, even as he sprayed round after round into that advancing mass.

Daniel stepped back and almost fell, his foot catching against something on the floor behind him. He glanced down, even as his gun emptied and fell silent Aidan was down. The crack he’d heard was the sound of the dart going straight through Aidan’s visor. He was dead. Daniel could see that at a glance. The dart had gone straight between Aidan’s eyes and embedded itself in his brain.

Daniel looked up, tearing his eyes away from the sight. Just beyond Aidan,

framed by the blackness, Ju Dun had crouched,

WHITE SPACE

his whole face intent, business-like as he fired past Daniel into the advancing mechanoids.

He turned back. That wall of living menace was now no more than fifteen metres distant. He had no bombs, no guns, no rockets to stop them. In a minute, maybe less, they would be overrun.

They could turn and run, of course, and maybe they would be fast enough not to be caught, but he doubted it Besides, the twists and turns of these tunnels were labyrinthine, and who knew what lay back there in the darkness waiting for them? “Ju Dun?” he yelled. “Are you ready?”

“Ready?” The boy laughed. “Ready to die, you mean?” “No. We’re going to go through. We’re going to see what lies on the other side of that!”

“Then I guess I’m ready.”

Daniel reached across and took Aidan’s gun. They were almost on him. As he swung the barrel up he almost rammed it into a pincered mouth - the mouth disintegrating in a shower of metal as the gun opened up. And then Daniel was inside that seething mass, flailing about, his head tucked down, the gun juddering in his arms as he held it to him, trying not to let them rip it from his grasp.

And pain, and pain, and pain ...

“Gods...”

They had never seen the like. There was a silence in the control room that was a silence of shock and awe and... incredulity. All the operators were on their feet now, staring up at the single image that now rilled the bank of screens, while DeVore, unnoticed in their midst, looked down, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

The boy was on the floor of the chamber, on his knees, his head fallen forward, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His gun lay on the floor beside him, where he’d dropped it Slowly his chest rose and fell, slowly his head came up. His suit was cracked and ripped, and there were smears of blood everywhere, but he was alive. And his eyes, which had witnessed all the horror and come through it, seemed now to see beyond the surface of all things. Not a dozen paces from where he knelt was the Inner Gate, the polished circle of its hatch gleaming softly in the half-light.

As they watched, Ju Dun walked back into the picture and crouched, facing Daniel.

“Are you okay now?”

There was the vaguest of movements from Daniel. His eyes flicked up and met the other’s, then glanced aside, looking past him at the Gate. “There’s something else,” he said quietly. “Some final thing.”

Ju Dun straightened, waiting for the other’s lead. Daniel gave a little shudder, then, putting his weight on his left hand, pushed himself up off the floor, getting to his feet The right arm hung limply where the tendon had been cut. Daniel had staunched the bleeding and sealed the wound, but the arm could not be used. Not that that mattered now.

“Close,” he said, speaking to himself, his voice a throaty whisper. “We must be very close now.”

Across from them, positioned some ten metres either side of the Gate, were two tunnels, their dark mouths hike the eye sockets in a skull. Daniel limped across, every movement causing him pain, until he stood at the mouth of the left-hand tunnel. Lifting his visor, he leaned forward slightly, sniffing the air.

Warm earth and engine oil.

For a moment he held himself perfectly still, listening. Then, without a glance at the Gate, he hobbled over to the other tunnel and, standing there, half-crouched, sniffed the air again and listened. There was a faint, yet distinct whirring sound.

Daniel turned his head, looking back at Ju Dun.

Down there, he mouthed, pointing with his good hand.

Back in the control room, Dublanc, seeing Daniel’s gesture, looked to DeVore.

“Shall I seal it off?”

DeVore shook his head. “No. Let him find out He ought to have that much satisfaction.”

“But he might.. .”

“Destroy it?” DeVore laughed coldly. “Yes, but we can make another.” Yes, DeVore thought, returning his attention to the screen, but can we make another Dame]?

Maybe Daniel was the one. Maybe - and it was a big maybe - this was what, unconsciously, he had been looking for.

If he could clone him, if he could somehow use those innate qualities of Daniel’s - qualities DeVore was certain he’d find encoded in the boy’s DNA - then who knew what he might create?

It was a big if. But he had worked with less before now and succeeded. And after all, it didn’t hurt to try.

On the screen, Daniel reached out, steadying himself with his good hand against the curved edge of the tunnel’s mouth. And then he stepped inside, hobbling slowly, awkwardly, his right arm hanging limp at his side, weaponless, undaunted, moving down, away from the safety of the Gate. Down, into the darkness at the heart of Eden.

The tunnel dipped sharply, then levelled out again. Where it levelled, three great circular holes had been cut into the ceiling. Daniel stood beneath the first, looking straight up, nodding to himself. Fans.

Air extractor fans. That was the whining sound he’d heard. Glancing at Ju Dun, he walked on. Beyond the fans the air grew warm - uncomfortably so.

And then, suddenly, the tunnel ended. As Ju Dun stepped up alongside him, Daniel felt something scuttle over his boot He looked down, seeing nothing, then looked up, hitting the pad on his chest In the momentary glare of the light he saw it all. The cavern was huge, maybe five hundred metres to a side and fifty metres in height. And against one wall, filling that space, its top edge crushed against the rock of the cavern’s roof, was what looked like a massive spider, its corpse-white flesh palpitating visibly. Beside him Ju Dun let out a shivering breath. “Aiya ...” The floor of the cavern was alive. A million tiny spiders crawled and heaved, carrying eggs backward and forward.

Fifty or more teats lined the side of that great monster, and even as they watched, egg after egg was squeezed from those puckered apertures and swiftly carried away.

The light faded and died.

Again Daniel hit the pad. Again the cavern lit up with a sudden, intense glare.

It was a factory, a living factory. The end walls were pocked with holes.

Tunnels, no doubt, that led to nurseries.

Daniel bent down and picked up one of the tiny spiders. It struggled between his fingers, a small, blind thing no more than three centimetres long, a tiny blue pupa clutched between its legs.

He made to put the thing down, then noticed the marking on the egg. Bringing up the magnification on his visor lenses, he studied it, then, with a tiny shudder, threw it from him.

A face. The marking was a tiny face.

He looked about him, noting how many different kinds of eggs the tiny creatures carried, then looked across once more at the bloated mother. Here it was, then. This ugliness. This meaninglessness at the centre of everything.

Daniel held his hand to his chest, maintaining the light, staring across at the corpse-pale monstrosity that filled the far side of the cavern. Was this the truth, then - this vision of blind process, this breeder of nullities? Or was it really the aberration he felt it was? The floor heaved with tiny dark shapes carrying off the eggs. And on each egg a face. The same face, endlessly duplicated. DeVore’s ... “What do you want to do?”

Daniel turned, surprised to find Ju Dun there. For a moment he had completely forgotten him.

“Do?”

Ju Dun smiled. “I’ve one grenade and a dozen rounds. It might not be enough, but...”

Daniel shook his head. He did not need to destroy it Seeing it was enough. And even if he died now, at least he understood.

This was how DeVore saw things. He had suspected as much, but now he knew. Knew beyond all doubt.

Something buzzed over his head. A probe. Daniel stared at it a moment, then nodded to himself.

Understanding was a seed. A seed to be carried from this place of nullity and nurtured. A seed. To be tended and watered.

He looked back at Ju Dun and smiled. “Okay. Lef s go.”

PART TWO - AUTUMN 2240

the Six secret teachings

“The eye values clarity, the ear values sharpness, the mind values wisdom. If you look with the eyes ofM Under Heaven, there is nothing you will not see. If you listen with the ears of M. Under Heaven, there is nothing you will not hear. If you think with the minds of All Under Heaven, there is nothing you will not know.”

· Tai Kung, The Six Secret Teachings [llth century bc]

“It is to be inferred that there exist countless dark bodies dose to the sun - such as we shall never see. This is, between ourselves, a parable; and a moral Psychologist reads the whole starry script only as a Parable and sign-language by means of which many things can be kept secret.”

· Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good And Evil 1886