Jack L. Chalker - QM 1 - The Demons at Ra

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TWO DEMONS

IN AMBER

The ship that roamed the sea of stars descended from heaven

toward the blue-green eden below, as always, looking for the

snake.

In the colorful terminology of Sector Mapping, the world be-

low and its solar system were in the area labeled in the common

language of interstellar commerce as Rainbow Bridge, after the

sounds used to translate the X-Y plotting coordinates on a map.

The words used for the symbols had no intrinsic meaning, and

there was no indication that the union of these accidental words

would be prophetic.

For nine days the small, crossbow-shaped scouting ship had

lain off the planet, while its carefully laid satellites, like the eggs

of a giant bird, had circled and crossed every square millimeter

of the planet's surface, photographing and mapping. Other eggs of

a different sort had been sent first to the atmosphere to sample

and test it and then gently to the ground in selected spots, and

even on and under the great seas that, from a height, seemed to

engulf and dominate the continental land masses. All of these

sent a steady stream of data back to the mother ship, where

computers compiled, checked, sorted, double-checked, and

evaluated the flood of information received from its children.

The process could, in fact, have been totally automated, but

very smart beings had learned over the years that you would

never remember to program it for all eventualities, and that ships

with their own artificial intelligence and full evaluative skills

2 jack L Chaiker

ultimately never seemed to have both a sense of aesthetics and

the horse-trader's know-how that could tell the measurably right

from the commercially right. The ship could do it all on its own,

but a second opinion from a different breed was always required.

The breed of living evatuators that accompanied the swift scout

ships into those blank spots on the star charts known only by

their colorful coordinates might have feathers or scales, fingers

or tentacles, might have been hatched from an egg or grown

from a pod; it might be male, female, neither, or all of the

above, and white it usually breathed oxygen, it might well be

more comfortable breathing water or methane or a half dozen

other substances. For all that, it was a single breed, distin-

guished not by its form or race or birthright but by the fact that

those of that breed called scout had to be of a singular mental

bent-

It was a fact that all scouts were mad; the debate still raged

as to whether the demands of the job drove them mad or whether

they were mad at the start. In their pasts, most races had seemed

to have a very small number of the breed no matter how different

they otherwise were; these were the pathfinders, the wilderness

explorers, the ones who pushed on alone into blanks on the

maps. It had been suspected that some factor—anything from

genetic engineering to just too much civilization—would breed

them out of existence, and it was true that a few races now

dominated the field, but, somehow, whenever someone discov-

ered a new blank on some map, a scout always seemed to be

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there.

This one happened to be named Cymak, a bipedal creature of

the basic Class II shape, with two arms and two legs and a thick

torso. He also happened to have lumpy, mottled skin the color

of rotted sewage, which was so thick some bullets wouldn't pen-

etrate it, and a triangular-shaped head that seemed to bob about

as if it were on a spring rather than a segmented neck. His

ancestors, before the age of synthetics, had fed on giant insect-

like creatures by punching holes in them while they still lived

and sucking out the fluids. He called himself and his physical

race Xymanths, which, of course, basically translated as "human

being," like most of the exotic names that intelligent life forms

called themselves. For terms like racial origin and planetary

names the interstellar tongue deferred to the local one. Other- S

wise there would be several hundred "human beings" who con-

THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE 3

sidered all but their own kind "nonhuman," and almost all of

them would refer to the mother worid of their races as "Earth."

The triangular head bobbed and weaved like an unattended

jack-in-the-box in the wind, as it looked over the data digests on

the screens. So far, the data looked good. So far, in fact, it

looked too good. Worlds well within the carbon-based life zone

that contained a readily balanced oxygen-nitrogen mixture within

half a per cent of optimum along with the proper water balance

were quite rare. Normally you took what you found and then

brought in an Exploiter Team to reengineer the world into some-

thing useful, or, even more frequently when these kinds of worlds

were found, there was already some form of higher life calling

it home.

Not here. There were vast forests and dense jungles all right,

and high mountain ranges, and it was perhaps a tad too volcanic

for absolute perfection, but so far the surveys had shown no

signs of an indigenous race of sentient beings. Oh, you could

find the basics there—creatures that took the ecological position

of insects, some high-level herbivores and the inevitable carni-

vores preying on them and pruning their herds, and some rather

odd ocean life as well, but nothing to show that anything higher

than that had ever evolved here.

Of course, as Cymak knew well, you could never be a hun-

dred per cent sure, even if you stayed a month. Intelligence came

in the oddest packages and didn't always fit the conventional

molds. More than once he, and almost all the other scouts, had

certified a worid as "exploitable," only to have Exploiter Teams

later discover rather nasty surprises down there. That was what

Exploiters got paid for.

Cymak's job was to check the obvious. Structures, signs of

environmental alteration, patterns that would show species dom-

inance, that sort of thing. If there was any kind of real intelli-

gence on this worid, it wasn't the conventional sort.

"There is an anomaly," the ship's computer reported to him.

"I had a number of passes made when it showed up, just to

make certain, and sent in the highest resolution photographic

gear once it was isolated. It is on the east coast of the smaller

continent in the northern hemisphere. It is definitely an artificial

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structure."

"Just one?" The Xymanth responded.

"Yes. One structure on the entire planet."

That was bad. Worse than a horde of screaming natives, in

4 jack L Chalker

fact, because one could often do something even with a primitive

population—but a single structure probably indicated that some-

body else had found the place first.

"Identification?"

"Unknown. That is, the structure is of no known type either

in the Exchange or in the Mycohl or Mizlaplan groups. In fact,

I did not report it immediately because the readings it gave off

indicated malfunctions in my own equipment."

"Put up your best shots on the screens." the scout instructed.

The screens blinked and then showed various passes in full

three dimensions. Cymak immediately understood the ship's

problem—the artifact was unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

In fact, the five views presented to him didn't even look much

like each other.

"These are not five separate structures? These are all views

of the same single object?"

"One object, same coordinates. You can see why I suspected

a defect. I checked for all known types of shielding and found

nothing in die registers. As far as I can determine, there was

nothing to filter or distort the shots you see. The material and

basic dimensions, at least, are consistent."

The first view showed a structure that resembled nothing so

much as a great amber-colored crystal of fine quartz perhaps

forty meters long, its various facets showing clearly, its far end

apparently rounded, its near end coming to a multifaceted taper

ending in a point. The second shot showed something the same

size and color, but now it seemed concave, as if the top were

turned inward. The third shot resembled the first, but the smooth

sides of each facet were different, as if the damned thing had

somehow turned. On the fourth there was no point, but rather a

yawning cavity that seemed to reach back half the length of the

thing. The fifth was the most disconcerting, with the object

seemingly segmented into quarters, with each turned slightly off

the other so that the facet walls were broken up and did not

match.

"Well, something is causing distortion," the Xymanth noted.

"Unless that thing is alive and kicking. Composition?"

"Every analysis comes up with indistinct data," the computer

told him. "AH I can tell you is that it is solid, appears to have

some of the properties of glass or glassine plastic, that it is

opaque, and that the substance does not appear to exist anywhere

else on the planet, either artificially or naturally. There are in-

THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE 5

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dications of a low yield energy source there but little else. It is

effectively dead to all remote analytical tools. There are no sig-

nals emanating from it otherwise, so it is not a beacon, and if

it is some sort of downed vessel from an unknown civilization,

it is not broadcasting anything we can monitor even as a distress

signal, although in any event I would find it inconceivable that

such a structure could have flown or even been carried here by

any known means of transport or propulsion."

"Life scan?"

"I get no life-form readings that are not consistent with the

natural life of the planet. If anyone's home, they either do not

match any known type of life or they are very well hidden inside

that thing."

"In other words," the scout muttered, "you, the most so-

phisticated and knowledgeable device any known technology can

create and program to answer any question and hazard exacting

theories on almost any eventuality with a command of facts and

data and a thought speed incomprehensibly better than my own—

you are telling me, essentially, that my guess is as good as yours.

Right?"

"Probably better than mine," the ship responded. "I do not

have nearly your capacity for wild flights of imagination."

"So it's not a spaceship, not a cargo module, not a house

built with materials found on the planet, either. So how did it

get there?"

"1 would not presume to guess. It has been there quite a

while, though. It is definitely buried in rock and soil to a fair

depth, and there is no sign of construction or melting or other

alterations. A good bet is that it has been there a very long time,

and that the rock and soil have formed around it. It has not,

however, been overgrown by the surrounding vegetation or cov-

ered by volcanic ash or debris. This indicates that there is some

kind of maintenance function within it that still works. Again,

if one had to speculate, it would appear most likely that the thing

contains a system somewhat analogous to my position in this

ship. It is entirely possible that the whole structure is some sort

of artificial intelligence in a shell, and indeed that may be all

that it is."

"Entirely plausible. You are certain, though, that it is of ex-

traptanetary origin and not merely an unusual feature?"

"Positive. The energy pulses show a clear-cut power source

of some kind, and there is some intake and exhaust of gases.

6 lack L. Chalker

Not a sufficient amount to indicate that the whole structure has

fall atmosphere, but enough to suggest that at least a small part

of it has. It would be interesting to get close enough to analyze

the gases it expels."

"Then let's get close enough. Roll in a remote unit and let's

see just what it's made of and what its reactions might be to an

approach. How long will it take?"

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"I have already constructed and programmed such a unit, an-

ticipating your actions. However, it is now past dark down there

in its area, and I would suggest a daytime foray. Get some food

and rest. In the morning we shall test this thing's mettle."

The probe dropped fairly close to the object, in part to see if

that would provoke any reaction from it. No scans or other trans-

missions were detected, and the probe settled to its point just

slightly off the ground and proceeded slowly toward the artifact

as Cymak and his monitoring computer watched on the screens

above.

From ground level, the long, exposed end, which sometimes

looked like the rough end of a crystal shard and sometimes like

a depression, looked very much the latter, almost a tunnel ringed

by sixteen even facets of crystalline substance leading back to a

single black point that might or might not have been an entrance

of some kind.

The probe did not at first try an approach to that point, but

instead rose up and did as much of a survey of the exterior as it

could. The initial measurements held up; it was a hair over forty

meters in length, seemingly embedded or wedded to the bed-

rock, the exposed portion a bit under four meters high from

ground level. There were no observable or measurable openings,

but it did seem to "bleed" gases in the broken, or entry, end,

almost as if it were somehow selectively porous. The region of

atmospheric bleed or exchange went in a bit over six meters and

then stopped abruptly.

"Definitely some sort of atmospheric chamber," the ship told

him. "It might be the entire inhabitable life zone within the

object, or it might be the only one that requires it. At the far

end are two isolated spots giving off heat—not a lot, but defi-

nitely indicating a coolant mechanism—and that's it."

"See if you can take a sample and analyze it," Cymak sug-

gested, more fascinated than worried.

The probe settled down on top of the structure, anchored itself

THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE 7

on three tight suction feet, then extended a small-core drill and

attempted to take a small sample. It didn't happen. All the drill

did was whirl around and begin to melt in the frustration of

going against something harder than its bit, even though the bit

was made of the hardest substance known to the Xymanth.

"Whatever it is, it's not quartz," the computer commented.

"Obviously. Well, it's almost certainly an exercise in futility,

but run through all the tests and see if we can come up with

anything."

Burning, controlled blasting, laser, and other tests proved

equally futile, proving Cymak correct. The computer spent four

hours doing everything it could to the object and at the end of

that time they knew just as much as they had before they began.

"One thing is certain—if we could figure out its composition

and duplicate it, we'd have the perfect enclosure and building

material," Cymak said. "Something built with this stuff would

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