Judas Unchained

The handheld array reported they were drawing near to the geometrical center of the reef; it was hard to define the exact point outside of an area a couple of hundred meters in diameter, although they were certainly halfway between the tips of both end spires. A good visual clue was in the size of the trees, which were getting a lot taller. Why, though? Is the center the oldest part? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Nonetheless, their trunks were massive here, several meters across, leaving the ground directly beneath them arid and dusty. The surrounding polyp had cracked, with long dead flakes lifting up like jagged teeth around the bark. Overhead, the ceiling of branches and leaves was so dense that the light had reduced to a pale uniform gloaming.

“It’s lighter up ahead,” Orion said. A glare of sunlight was filtering past the trunks. They walked toward it, squinting after so long in the gloomy silence of the great trees.

The light came from a clearing over a kilometer wide. For once there was a blanket of greenery covering the ground, a plant as tenacious as ground eldar but with slim ankle-high jade-green leaves that rustled like rice paper. A fence of the purple polyp tubes formed a neat perimeter, towering above the thick trees, each one curving around high above them so their ends were aligned horizontally out across the reef.

“They’re chimneys!” Orion declared. White vapor was oozing out of each one, twirling away above the treetops. Ozzie recalled the odd riverlike ribbons of cloud they’d seen on their approach.

Orion immediately dropped down and pressed his ear to the ground.

“Friend Orion, what are you doing?” Tochee asked.

“Listening for the machines. There must be factories in the caves down there.”

“I do not detect any electrical or magnetic activity,” Tochee said.

“Calm down, man,” Ozzie said. “Think about this: Factories to make what?”

Orion gave him a puzzled look, then shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Okay, then. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“There is something in the middle of the clearing,” Tochee said.

Ozzie used his inserts to zoom in. A squat black pillar stood by itself in the middle of the rustling sea of leaves. “Now that’s more like it.”

Orion got there first, leaping on ahead, each giant step sending him gliding three or four meters through the air. Ozzie took more cautious steps, keeping a wary eye out on the sky above, while Tochee slithered along at a modest speed.

The pillar was three meters tall, standing on a broad patch of bluish polyp devoid of any soil or plants A ring of symbols had been engraved halfway up, made from long thin strokes curving at all angles, with several orbital dots. All the grooves and indentations had been filled with a clear crystal. Ozzie scanned them with the handheld array, and whistled at the result. “Diamond. That’s one mother of an expensive anticorrosion application.”

“What kind of runes are they?” Orion asked. The symbols bore a slight similarity to ideograms, but not in any human language. “Is it like a signpost for paths?”

“I don’t have any reference,” Ozzie said. “How about you, Tochee?”

“I regret not.”

Ozzie began to scan the ground, which was solid enough. None of his sensors could detect any kind of cavity beneath the pillar. Nor was there any electrical activity, no circuits buried just below the surface. He gave the pillar an aggravated look as an excited Orion hurried around it, the boy’s eager fingers tracing the lines on all the symbols. Then Ozzie looked back across the open expanse of the glade, an unwelcome conclusion dawning in his mind.

“Shit!” Ozzie spat brutally. “Shit shit shit.” He aimed a kick at the base of the pillar. It hurt his toe, so he kicked it again, harder. “Ouch!” Kick with the other foot. “I do not fucking believe this, man.” All the frustration, all the rage that had been building inside him, was rushing out; vented on this one simple artifact. He hated it for what it was, everything it represented.

“What’s wrong, Ozzie?” Orion asked quietly. The boy was giving him an apprehensive glance.

“What’s fucking wrong? I’ll goddamn tell you what’s wrong.” He kicked the pillar again, not quite so hard this time. “I have spent months in the wilderness, eating crappy fruit when all I wanted was a decent steak and fries; actually, I don’t just want it, I dream of it. I’m walking around in rags like something out of the stone age. I haven’t had sex in, like, forever. I’ve been sober so long now my liver is feeling healthy. I’ve been flushed off an ocean in the biggest cosmic joke there ever was. But I put up with it, all this crap, because I know you—yes YOU—are watching and guiding me along, and manipulating the paths so that in the end we’ll meet up. But, oh no, you’ve got to have one more go at making me feel humble, one more time making me the butt of your stinking lame-ass, so-called humor.” He thrust a finger out toward the pillar. “I do not think this is funny! You got that? Are we clear on the meaning of NO, here?”