Babylon 5 07 - The Shadow Within (Cavelos, Jeanne) Read online

  Babylon 5

  The Shadow Within

  by: Jeanne Cavelos

  getting : Ãîëîäíûé Ýâîê Ãðûçëè formatting : Chilin upload : 10.V.2006

  First issue - April 1997 Second issue - November 2002

  NOVEMBER 2256

  CHAPTER I

  Anna Sheridan rested her elbows on her desk and her chin on her nested fists, studying the artifact that lay before her. It was about five inches long, three wide at its widest point, and about three inches high. The front end, as she had come to think of it, rounded in a gentle curve, looking almost like a head, while the back end tapered to a point, almost like a tail. The surface of the object, with an odd elastic property like skin, was a mottled grayish color.

  The various shades of gray, rather than merging into each other as they did in living creatures, were separated in small block segments, giving the surface a mechanical appearance. The shape of the object had the feel of something organic, living, though her tests had shown her that it was a mixture of the biological and the mechanical. This object, the mouse as she called it, was the first example of true biomechanical technology ever discovered.

  She tried not to think about that too much, tried to limit those embarrassing daydreams about accepting the Nobel prize to a quickie after lunch. The discovery was no good unless she could figure out how the technology worked, unless she could figure to work the technology. She'd run every test and scan she could think of, and while they had yielded incredible information, they'd left her no closer to understanding the purpose of this device or the method by which it was operated. She'd tried every method she could think of to activate it, to wake it up, from old-fashioned poking to subtle alterations to its environment, but it remained inert.

  She took the mouse in her hand, feeling the slight warmth of it against her palm. Its skin felt like that of Dr. Chang's hairless pet cat. There was a slight smell to it, too, like the anchovies she loved and John hated, though more subtle and faint. She could almost feel the life of it in her hand, as if she were holding a sleeping mouse. She admired the simplicity, the smoothness of its outer shape, the complex, intricate skeleton she knew was within.

  She visualized its heart beating quietly, steadily at its core, the brain waves' repeating oscillation within. She imagined the electrons flowing through the superconducting metal. She noticed then that the shades of gray on the back of the mouse were shifting. She put her hand under the desk light. The surface of the mouse was changing shades in block segments, one small rectangle of skin now a light gray, then a charcoal, then a medium gray. Overall the pattern gave the sense of lines of charcoal proceeding slowly down the mouse's back. The device seemed activated.

  It was so beautiful, so elegant. Neurons fired, circuits responded, patterns emerged. And to this beat it carried out its function, living, breathing, its functioning a song, a march in lockstep, unified in purpose, focused, uplifting. It was the machine, and the machine was the universe. It towered dark in the vault of the sky, ageless, mighty, a perfect mechanism, never tiring, never slowing. Perfect grace, perfect control, form and function integrated into the circuitry of the unbroken loop, the iteration, the closed universe, in which was written on the neural pathways and in the dark microscopic voids its purpose, circulating like a shadow through the heart of the machine. Her life belonged to the machine. She loved the machine.

  Anna dropped the mouse onto her desk and jumped out of her chair. Something had happened. The shifting of the gray blocks slowed, stopped. What had she been thinking? Alien thoughts. The mouse's thoughts. The mouse had been communicating its thoughts to her. The mouse, the loyal tool, had been communicating its love of its job. And it had nearly overwhelmed her in the process. Anna backed away from the desk, her heart pounding. The mouse sat quietly in the circle of light from her desk lamp. Holding the mouse and concentrating on it had somehow activated it. How could she have lost herself so easily? For a few moments, she had forgotten who she was, what she was, even that she was. She had been absorbed by alien thoughts, enthralled by the machine. The machine had taken over her mind.

  Her fear slowly dissipated as she realized what a breakthrough she had made. She had activated a device utilizing a totally unknown technology that had lain dormant for over a thousand years. But what, exactly, had activated it, and how could she study it if any contact overwhelmed her?

  Her hand tapping against her leg, Anna crossed the lab to the window, shooting glances back at the mouse. Outside, it had begun to snow, the thick flakes driving against the windows of Geneva City Hospital across the wide boulevard.

  Three floors down, the morning traffic was now in full swing. She'd missed it, coming in early after a night of restless sleep to study the mouse. It was potentially the greatest find she'd ever made, but if she couldn't discover how it worked, the find would be meaningless.

  Three months ago, she'd returned from a dig for Interplanetary Expeditions (IPX) on Theta Omega 2, a planet near the rim of known space. Under Dr. Chang, the mission commander and her old instructor at the University of Chicago, they'd unearthed the remains of a race who called themselves the J/Lai, an offshoot of the Brakiri. Although the artifacts and the culture they implied had been fascinating, IPX had been mainly interested in a particular crystalline stone that the J/Lai had used as an energy source. Once she and the other archaeologists had determined that the J/Lai used this stone for energy, the information was handed over to the engineers. She and the others on the science team of the expedition were left batting cleanup, at least in the minds of the IPX executives.

  Their interest in archaeology was perfectly summed up in the corporate slogan, "Exploring the past to create a better future," as long as the better future was better for IPX. Or as one of her colleagues, Favorito, liked to paraphrase, "Exploiting the past to create a better profit margin." If they couldn't use it, swap it, or sell it, they didn't care about it. But when it came to mounting major expeditions to distant planets, they were the only game in town. As she'd justified her growing involvement with IPX to her husband, John, "It's all right to deal with the devil, as long as you do it freelance."

  And so the executives' attention turned elsewhere, which was fine with Anna. She could fill out the end of her contract with IPX in peace. Then she planned to return to MIT for a year, where her baggy sweaters, khaki pants, and irregularly combed hair wouldn't be so out of place. She would teach for a while and get back into the in-depth research that allowed her to immerse herself in a long-dead alien culture.

  Most people didn't understand her desire to know how alien cultures had thought and lived. John tried, though he was undeniably a man of the present. Her parents appreciated the profitability of discovering ancient alien technologies. But most nonarchaeologists didn't understand that in the practice of her profession she traveled in space and time and body, unlocked ancient secrets, gained communion with races staggeringly different from her own, and examined how all these different races tried to answer the same questions, to cope with the same problems: where did we come from, where are we going, and what significance can my life possibly have? Maybe, someday, she'd find the answers for herself.

  Her specialty was tools, the favorite of most archaeologists , and she'd been working up her report on the tools of the J/Lai culture two days ago when she'd realized that there was one pallet of artifacts she'd failed to examine. In the computer, the pallet was designated "Miscellaneous," which to archaeologists meant items too small to be identified or those deemed of no significance. These were usually natural, unmodified objects that happened to be located at
an archaeological site. In a dig on Earth, for example, rocks or acorns that had not been used by humans and had not been modified by them would be included in "miscellaneous."

  But she was a perfectionist-didn't like to leave any stone unturned as Chang liked to joke-archaeologists' humor-and so went down to the warehouse to examine the pallet. Most of the items did look like "miscellaneous," though after scrutinizing each piece she found ten she wanted to pull for further study. Three, in particular, intrigued her.

  Back in her lab, she studied the three. They looked almost like dried-out corn husks, two quite shriveled, the third one less so. They at first appeared similar to a plant on Theta Omega 2, which was probably how they had gotten into "miscellaneous," though on further examination the error of that identification became clear. The more she studied them, the more animallike they seemed. The outer layer was thin and fragile, almost like a butterfly's cocoon, with a slightly iridescent quality. She dec ided to run a few more tests before handing the objects over to Churlstein, the physical anthropologist from the expedition.

  Her first scan came back with incongruous results: the objects inside the husks appeared to have simultaneously biological and mechanical characteristics. She repeated the scan and got the same results. Anna studied the nonsensical readouts for a long time, her mind racing through possibilities. The J/Lai had nothing like this. It was far more advanced than anything they had; far more advanced than anything anyone had. An RNA screen revealed that the mitochondrial RNA of the objects didn't match that of the microorganisms on Theta Omega 2. The objects came from a different planet, a different culture. Forcing herself to sit still and breathe deeply, she ran one final scan, to reveal hard structures within the husks. The two shriveled husks revealed what looked like quasi-skeletal remains, broken and jumbled. The third husk revealed a complex, elegant skeleton, one with a bizarre structure and an unusual variety in bone density and width. In all the skeletons from all the planets she had seen, she'd never seen anything that looked like this. Its intricate, bizarre pattern gave her the sense of something crafted, artificial. And it looked perfectly intact. This was when she ran, yelling and waving her test results, down the hall to Dr. Chang.

  He'd been as excited as she was, and she saw a quickness in his step, a sharpness to his gestures that she hadn't seen since he'd left the university and started working full-time for IPX about ten years ago: Time to cash in on all those laurels I've accumulated, he'd joked at the time.

  Yesterday she'd opened the three cocoons, apparently protective or preservative envelopes of some kind, uncovering in the two shriveled cocoons the quasi-skeletal remains, and in the remaining cocoon the mouse. With Chang and occasionally others looking on, she'd run a battery of tests. The results often generated more questions than answers. Late into the night after Chang had gone, she'd continued to examine the mouse. She wondered whether it should be considered a biomechanical device or a biomechanical species. Tests had shown it had a pulse and a rudimentary circulatory system. She had also detected low- level electrical activity suggesting a quasi brain wave, though the brain waves had a perfect, uniform cyclical structure. No known creature had a simple, perfectly cyclical brain-wave pattern; the steady frequency and amplitude were more characteristic of electronics. In addition, the electrical pattern was propagated throughout the entire object, as through a classical electronic device, rather than being limited to a certain area. While certain components contained organic compounds, others were forged from an unfamiliar superconducting metal. A complex array of microprocessors clung to sections of the skeleton like barnacles. The mouse's energy source was a mystery.

  Why would an advanced species create something like this? If it was a tool of some kind, she'd been unable to discern its workings. There were no obvious controls or mechanisms. She didn't know what it might do. When working with the artifacts of a specific culture, she always tried to create a part of her mind that thought like the alien. Bit by bit she added information -how they obtained food, how they created shelter-until in some limited way she could re-create the way they saw things, the way they lived. That was her method: study the artifacts left behind, deduce the culture of those who had left them, reconstitute their behavior, recapture their thoughts. But in this case, she had only three artifacts from which to deduce an entire culture. It was like trying to deduce the contents of a dark room from what she could see in the beam of a stationary pinpoint light. And if she didn't come up with results soon, she knew IPX would hand the mouse over to someone else. Her planned three-week vacation/anniversary celebration starting tomorrow only added to the pressure.

  Anna turned away from the window. The mouse sat still in the circle of light cast by the lamp, a point of calm in the center of the maelstrom she called her lab. In the last two days, it had deteriorated from cluttered to barely controlled chaos. Test results were scattered over her desk and lab table, where the three isocases holding the quasi-skeletal remains and the mouse's cocoon sat waiting for her insights. The counter along the left wall was covered with testing equipment she had borrowed from other labs, several comp-pads, only one of which was hers, and reference books she'd pulled down from the bookcase beside the door. Along the right wall was the isolab and the console controlling it, her personal computer hanging over the edge of the console alongside a scattering of unlabeled data crystals. Hardly the corporate image Chang so often reminded her they wanted to present. But she knew where everything was, and she got results. Usually. But for some reason, after her big breakthrough, here she was delaying. The thoughts of the mouse, so clear and so powerful, had shaken her. Losing her self, even for a few moments, was terrifying. And she sensed that the mouse had only been brought to a minimal level of activity, awakening only for a few moments. What would it do when fully activated?

  She returned to her desk. If her touch had activated the mouse, then she'd re-create the environment of her touch until she found the factor that had activated it. She took two of the printouts on her desk, used one to nudge the mouse onto the other. Then picking that printout up from either side, she carried the mouse into the isolab and sealed it inside.

  With the mouse now isolated, Anna sat at the isolab console, where she could observe the artifact through the window and manipulate the environment within. She re-created the temperature of her hand. She recreated the chemical salinity and oils on her palm. She re-created the pulse of her blood, the faint electromagnetic field of her body. All to no effect. The coloring on the mouse remained unchanged.

  She raised the temperature another ten degrees, far beyond what it would have been in her hand. Waited. No change. Chang's heavy footsteps sounded behind her.

  "I got your message. Any luck?"

  He sounded like a different person from yesterday, as if the growing pragmatism and caution of the last ten years had suddenly been doubled over night. The enthusiasm in his voice yesterday had been replaced by his corporate poker- neutral tone. With a practiced push of her foot, Anna swung around in her chair, turning away from the isolab window and console.

  Dr. Chang had looked almost the same for as long as she'd known him: fine flyaway grayish white hair, a short, compact build, around his eyes and mouth the rugged wrinkles of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Her favorite part of him was his hands, covered with the calluses that were the badges of honor of field archaeologists, yet graceful in their movement. Her own hands were callused-it was an occupational hazard-but it would take years before they looked like Dr. Chang's. The main change in him over the years had been a slight widening of his midsection and a radical change in clothes when he joined the corporate environment of IPX. She still found it odd to see him in a tailored suit and tasseled loafers. He seemed to belong in rugged outdoor gear. Yet today he looked drained, a slump in his chest and a slackness to his mouth as if he'd lost touch with his body.

  She thought she'd cheer him up.

  "I activated the mouse this morning somehow, when I was holding it."

/>   "You did?" he said, the question sounding more like a statement.

  "What happened?"

  He leaned forward to look at the mouse down on the floor of the isolab.

  "Is something wrong?" she asked.

  "What? No."

  He straightened.

  "I didn't get much sleep last night."

  Anna smiled.

  "Me neither. So I came in early, and when I was holding the mouse, the color patterns on it started to shift."

  He sat down beside her at the console, enthusiasm warming his voice.

  "Incredible, Anna. So what are you doing now?"

  "I was trying to re-create the environment of my hand, to isolate the factor that activated it. But nothing's working."

  She brought up the variables she'd been manipulating on the monitor. Chang's eyes seemed to glide over them.

  "None of these variables had the same effect as your touch."

  "No."

  He turned to her.

  "You're holding something back."

  Anna's hand tapped against her leg. Through the isolab window the object rested, quiet as a sleeping mouse.

  "This morning when I was holding it, when the patterns started to move, I felt something. I felt it thinking. It communicated to me telepathically."

  "So you think maybe it's operated telepathically."

  With his thumbnail he scraped at a callus on his index finger.

  "I'm no telepath, but I think that maybe by holding it, and by focusing my attention on it, I may have brought it to some minimal level of activity."

  Now that she'd come out with the theory she'd been avoiding since her contact with the mouse, it seemed inevitable, and the next step was clear.

  "A telepath may be able to fully activate it."

  Chang's tone turned neutral.

  "You want to bring a tel epath in on this?"

  "I don't see any other way. We've brought in various experts before. Hell, I'm a freelancer, along with half of the people in this building."