Jack L. Chalker - QM 2 - Run to Chaos

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file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20The%20Quintara%20Marathon%202%20-%20The%20Run%20to%20Chaos.txt

THE RUN TO CHAOS KEEP

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace hardcover edition / May 1991 Ace paperback edition / May 1992

Cover art by Darrell Sweet.

ISBN: 0-441-69348-2

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New

York, New York 10016.

The name "ACE" and the "A" logo are trademarks belonging to Charter

Communications, Inc.

e-book ver. 1.0

For the late

Catherine "C.L."Moore,

who showed us how it's done

over fifty years ago.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

When writing the three volumes of The Quintara Marathon, I immediately ran into

the problem of representing nonverbal communications. In the book we have

various characters and creatures, some of whom communicate in whole or in part

directly with the mind of another. When added to internalized dialogue, this

began to make for a page that was both confusing and typographically unwieldy.

The late George O. Smith, when faced with this problem, decided that the easiest

way to resolve this was to use a different dialogue delimiter so that the reader

would instantly know which communications were verbal and which were

mind-to-mind. I have often marveled that others never took up this practice, but

it seems practical here and throughout The Quintara Marathon. Thus, to alert

you, text delimited by opposing carets, or "arrows" as they are sometimes called

(e.g. <Watch out on your left!>), is telepathic or mind-to-mind dialogue

throughout this book, joining the traditional "Watch out!" for verbal

communications and Better watch out (no delimiters) for internalized dialogue.

It might jar right at the start, but as, every once in a while, all sorts of

furious dialogue flies in all directions, I think you'll find it remarkably easy

to get used to, and certainly preferable to the alternatives.

Jack L. Chalker

THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE

AN ANGUISHED, GHOSTLY SPECTRE TRAPPED IN Hell had summoned them to this remote

place, and, worst of all, it was a collect call.

"All ships . . . any ships . . . Exchange registry . . . This is Research Vessel

Wabaugh. Coordinates based on special map frontier zone one one four eight two

stroke five. Coordinates are Rainbow Bridge. Send assistance fast. They're all

dead. They're all in there with the demons and they're all dead. Only one left.

Can't leave. Approach with extreme caution! Power adequate for maintenance only.

Any Exchange registry. Approach with caution. Demons at Rainbow Bridge!

Coordinates ..."

The blue and green world below them looked so tranquil, so placid, that it

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seemed as if nothing could disturb its quiet beauty, but they were an Arm of the

gods of the Mizlaplan, a holy gathering in Inquisition assembly, and they had

already risked much to get this far.

Although, by treaty, the Mizlaplanian survival suit was officially categorized

as "gold in color," that was simply to get around different racial perceptions

of color. The suits were not shiny, but rather dull, more a darker shade of

yellow with just a bit of orange than golden. The form-fitted suits, customized

for each individual, differed only in detail from those used by the other two

great empires, the Mycohl and the Exchange, but for color, of course. Captain

Gun Roh Chin, master of the Mizlaplanian freighter Faith of Gorusu, graduate of

the Naval Institute, now an Instrument of the Arm of the Holy Inquisition,

looked at them all in their fairly bright suits and wished that the diplomats

had insisted on charcoal; he felt like a beacon in the damned thing, or a very

good target. They had been forced into this desolate and isolated frontier

sector of space on orders; to get here, they had been forced to cross Mycohlian

space at its narrowest point, and, narrow or not, were two empires away from

home and doubly illegal.

Even though Chin timed his drop and his thrust perfectly, it took him close to

thirty precious minutes to maneuver up to the Exchange ship, and, when he did,

he found it with beacons and running lights off and no sign of power.

The ship was an impressive sight nonetheless, framed against the blue-green and

white backdrop of the planet below; clearly a research and supply, rather than

military, vessel, it floated suspended between the planet and the stars, looking

very, very lonely.

"It doesn't look damaged," Krisha the Holy Mendoro, the dark beauty who was both

priestess and Arm security officer, noted, trying to see what detail she could.

"I am telepathically scanning, and I get nothing at all."

"Nor I,'' added Savin the Holy Peshwa, who was a powerful empath. Empaths often

received things at far greater distance than telepaths, although, in both cases,

they weren't expecting to feel or monitor anything intelligible—just some sign

that there was life aboard. "It feels like a dead ship."

Savin was a Mesok, a huge humanoid creature with a hard, rubbery reptilian skin,

nasty yellow eyes like some giant cat's, with big, bony hands whose fingers and

toes ended in suckers at their tips, and big, bony, dish-like ears that seemed

glued onto the top of his angular head. He was a fearsome-looking one, all green

and black, with enormous teeth that showed even with his mouth closed, and his

very sight was intimidating as a vision of Hell. There wasn't one of them who

didn't give prayers of thanks every time they looked at him that he was on their

side.

Manya the Holy Szin looked up from her instrument cluster. "It is a dead ship,"

she told them. "No power levels at all. Even the emergencies have been drained.

Only the broadcast emergency transponder, which is opposite the planet's

surface, shows any energy at all. It is inert. No life forms, no internal power.

We will have to cut through an airlock just to board her."

Manya, the science officer of the Arm, was a Gnoll—short, squat, barrel-chested

gnomes with snake-like forked tongues, huge pointed ears that stuck up on both

sides of their heads, and with gray skin like an elephant's hide and twice as

tough. But they and Terrans could eat the same foods, tended to share a liking

for sweets, had similar biological systems, and weren't as far apart in the

evolutionary way as they seemed on the surface.

"You're certain of that, Manya?" Morok pressed her. "No life, no internal power?

It can't just be shielded?"

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Morok the Holy Ladue was tall, frail-looking, and quite bird-like in appearance,

his tiny hands at the end of the long, leathery wings that could actually be

used to fly—in the right gravity and environment—and the leader of the Arm.

Still, there was also something reptilian about him, at least subjectively to

Terrans, and this came across in his constant cool, seemingly dispassionate

manner.

' 'No. If there were any attempts at shielding of .that sort then the shields

themselves would register," the science officer replied. "There is nothing alive

aboard. Even its computers are out."

"Somebody survived whatever it was," Krisha noted. "Somebody sent that message

along with the distress beacon."

' 'Yes, but how long ago?'' Gun Roh Chin asked her. ' 'Many days, certainly.

Perhaps longer. With life support down, they might not have been able to find a

way to keep going. They might have lost hope after nobody came. They might have

gone mad.".

Savin's huge eyes scanned the surface of the research vessel. "Holiness—the

escape pods are still intact as well. Not a one has been fired. Not even -the

ones away from the surface that show some trickle charge—enough to use

manually."

"Yes? So?" Morok was more spooked than irritated. They all were.

"Holiness—at least a few near the transponder are almost certainly usable, power

drain or not. They weren't used. The first implication is that whatever happened

here happened very quickly and to everyone. Everyone but one. He, she, it—

whatever—survived, possibly by being in the only place near the transponder

that's still active, and was possibly only knocked out when everyone and

everything else went They would likely not have a huge crew on this sort of ship

anyway. That person is not aboard now, or, if aboard, died there. Died there

right next to a getaway system. Or got away without using the pods."

Gun Ron Chin nodded. "The pod would have taken him to the nearest survivable

planet We assume that they wouldn't assign races to this who couldn't survive

down there, since the climate, atmosphere, and the like have measured safe for

us. It Would have taken our survivor to the surface, with enough supplies and

shelter for a month or more. That means ..."

"It means," Krisha finished for him, "that he chose to die, either horribly or

by his own hand, rather than go down to that world."

"There is a shuttle missing," Morok noted. "I saw its empty nesting bay on the

underside."

"Within range of whatever it was, though," Savin pointed out "I would assume

that the shuttle was on the surface with the main scientific party. Since

whatever killed this ship came from down there, I think it highly unlikely that

anyone mere risked flying up here to get that survivor off. Or was able to."

"Do you want to board her?" Chin asked them.

"Yes," responded Morok, "but not now. If there is no life aboard, we must first

determine if there is still life below."

"Well, there is surely something below," Manya commented. "The energy pattern on

the ship clearly indicates that it took a jolt of almost inconceivable power,

pure energy, from a point below on the surface. It shorted out all the systems,

shorted the computers, and most likely electrocuted almost everyone. Our

survivor was probably the only one in some sort of insulated situation and so

did not get the full jolt."

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"If I am to be electrocuted, I should rather know who is doing it to me, and

why," Morok said in a flat, hollow tone.

"Take it down, Captain. Land at their camp below. Everyone check suits and

weapons. Yes, again. Now!"

It wasn't difficult to find the camp below. It was a world covered with trees

and seas, but the camp appeared to be the only sign of any animal life on it.

There were a number of temporary, prefabricated structures down mere as well as

parabolic communications antennae all of which were easy to spot

"A standard scientific field station, not much different than the way we would

do it," Manya told them. "The only thing I cannot understand is that

large—house, or building, or whatever it is. It is of a totally different design

than the others and looks quite permanent In fact it almost looks as if it were

tooled from a single, unimaginably huge quartz-like crystal."

"More likely the object under study," Morok guessed. "Is it the odd light or my

eyes, or does that—thing—seem slightly different almost as if it moved?"'

"I have been plotting it" Manya reported. "It does change, somehow. Not really

in mass or even dimensions, but subtly, in detail."

"Could it be alive?"

' 'It might be—but if it is, it is like nothing we know as life in any form. I

simply do not know what it is, and I suspect that they didn't either. That is

why they are here."

"The base station has normal power," Chin noted. "Looks rather cozy, in fact.

But we're not being scanned by anything I can detect. It's as if everybody down

mere is asleep. Ah—see! Then- shuttle's there, in that clearing. I think I can

put down close to it. No use in sneaking up. If any thing's left alive down

here, it certainly knows we're here by now and should come out and welcome us

with open arms."

There was no welcoming committee. They put on their helmets, pressurized, and

went out even though all the instrumentation said that the air was perfectly

safe and the temperature was quite pleasant. Until they knew more, none of them

wanted to take anything for granted.

"Dead like the ship," Krisha said. "Nothing. I get nothing at all. Savin?"

"The same, although I do get some very odd intermittent sensations from the area

of that object there. I can't really explain the sensation. It's not like

anything I have ever

experienced before. Whatever it is, I do not think it is directed at us."

"That will have to do for now," Morok told him. "Check out their shuttle first,

then the prefabs, one at a time. Use caution, keep weapons drawn."

Gun Roh Chin took the shuttle. It wasn't difficult to enter, and, inside, he

found it rather bizarrely arranged but nothing he could not have figured out. It

was clearly not designed to be flown by humans, although there were two

human-shaped seats in the rear. The rest he put down to different designs and a

different shuttle design philosophy. Still, he could tell almost from the moment

he entered that it was powered, fully charged, and could be operational with a

few flicks of a few switches.

"Shuttle is perfect and operational," he reported through his helmet radio.

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"Then it could have picked up our survivor," Morok came back.

"Unlikely. Without power up there, they'd have had to cut away the outer airlock

faceplate to get to the manual controls. They didn't. This thing was here before

and it's been here all the time."

"The square prefab! Come quickly!" Krisha shouted.

They were all there on the run as soon as they got their bearings, piling into

the door and then stopping dead just inside.

"May the gods embrace their innocent souls and reincarnate them to a life of

peace," Morok intoned.

Gun Roh Chin was not prayerful. Even protected from the stench by his suit, he

still wanted to throw up.

Savin bent down over a bloody form. "Krisha, exobiology is not my strong point,

but isn't the human heart mounted roughly in the central chest cavity?"

Krisha swallowed hard. "Yes, roughly. What . . . ?"

The huge Mesok grabbed a shock of white hair atop the head of a Terran corpse,

its face locked in a horrible and grotesque death mask, and yanked it up

unceremoniously so that the chest was exposed.

The central area of the chest had been literally torn open, as if by some wild

creature, possibly, even probably, while the man had been still alive. They all

caught their breaths, but Manya scurried over and began using her portable

instruments

to examine the awful-looking wound. Even the tough, fanatical Gnoll seemed a bit

shaky, though.

"It ... has been torn from his chest," she managed. "Several of the others have

equivalent mutilations. Something with great strength just pushed them down,

like a child's plaything, and either ripped or tore key organs out of them."

"How long have they been dead?" Morok asked her.

"Seven days at least. This happened at least seven days ago. The bodies are

dried up and beginning decomposition."

Gun Roh Chin wanted to avoid the sight of the research party, its nice little

lab smeared in red human blood, and Zalerian green, and gray, and purple, and

other colors of other races who had been here. He walked over to the far side of

the lab and began to examine a huge hole that had seemingly been smashed into

the wall around what had once been a window. He pushed away where the debris had

bent inward and looked out at the strange, slightly changing, translucent

structure just beyond.

In the small administration hut there was much the same, only here the door had

simply been kicked or blown in. Here, too, were apparently several armed

security officers, and this apparently had been, along with a couple found

outside, the only armed members of the party. Some had clearly gotten off a lot

of shots, and they looked, even in their present condition, to be the kind who

didn't miss.

Whatever had come out of that thing and killed them was hardly subtle; it had

just come, on and on, oblivious to anything that they could do.

He had been around, seen hundreds of worlds and races, seen violence and cruelty

as well as gentleness and good, but he had never seen anything like this.

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