Swarm Read online

  The snake-arm shook me off in the next cubicle and hauled away the dead centaur before I could climb up on it again. I watched it vanish into another room. Had I missed my ride? Had I just failed one of these tests? My heart pounded.

  Then I thought of the door behind me. Climbing to my feet, I looked back around. The floor in the first room vanished as the wall between the two rooms grew back together out of nothing. I had just enough time to see the second centaur’s bloody corpse fall an unknown distance down. I blinked at that. If I had stayed in the room, would they have dumped me too, allowing me to fall tumbling to my death?

  “What do you want from me?” I demanded of the walls.

  There was no answer, but a moment later two more doors opened. Why two? I investigated both paths, gingerly tapping with my foot. The floor vanished on the first one and opened upon a scene of the Earth whirling by at night. We had to be a mile up. I was surprised, as I’d felt no sensation of flying upward. No gee forces had tugged at my body, yet obviously I should have felt the elevator-ride sensation of upward momentum. I could see a dark night landscape, dotted with light. What had to be Highway 99, strung with orange sodium streetlights, snaked off to the north and south.

  I backed away into the space I had come from.

  “Caution demonstrated.”

  Those two doors closed, and a third door opened up. I thought about that. Had both paths, whichever one I had chosen, led to a deadly fall? I waited. Why move at all, if they were just going to kill me? After about a minute, the floor under my feet felt warm. After two minutes, I was hopping from foot-to-foot. I finally got the message and stepped through into that third room cautiously.

  Clearly, these were tests. I wanted to do some testing on my alien hosts. My tests would be very easy to perform. All I wanted to do was discover what color their brains were when exposed to dry air. I did everything I could to focus on the tests, on defeating them. I tried not to think about the kids. Thinking about them would paralyze me, make me numb and useless. Grief would have to wait.

  By now I was fed up with their games. But I had to play along, unless I wanted to jump out. I thought about jumping out of the ship. Perhaps this was their form of entertainment. Maybe they were sitting somewhere, laughing and betting on how far the dumb primitive would make it through their maze of tests and tricks. Part of me wanted to end the torment, but a strong desire for revenge kept me going. I wanted to crack another alien head or two before they killed me. I wasn’t quite finished with them.

  In the third room the voice came back. “The subject will submit to interrogation.”

  I thought about that. What did they want, my secret ATM code? What could I possibly know that would interest such creatures? It occurred to me they did not really want information. They wanted to test me. This was another step in their test sequence, just as everything else had been. Had my children been tested and found wanting? I suspected they had, and the floor had opened up for them and dumped them out of the ship. That seemed to be the universal price for failure.

  This nurtured a new emotion in me: rage. Not just for revenge, now, but I was angry about how I was being treated. I was their lab animal, and I didn’t like it. I would pit my wits against theirs as best I could. Maybe I would get my chance to strike back. Or maybe I would at least impress these cowardly bastards. I was already envisioning guys with huge skulls in fluttering white lab coats.

  What helped me think was my lack of fear. I believe most people, at this point, would have been shaking with fear. But after several life and death struggles and watching my kids die, I was empty inside. I was deflated. There was no room left for fear. I had become cold and calculating. Call it a personality flaw, but that’s how I felt.

  “The subject will submit to interrogation,” repeated the voice.

  I thought about grunting no, or staying silent. It seemed obvious they would just heat the floor again. Could I take off my clothes, wrap my feet in the cloth and stand on my gun? Maybe. But that sort of thing wasn’t what the tests, so far, had been looking for. I reviewed them in my mind: First, I was tested for fighting skills. Second, initiative, and thirdly, caution. This had to be the fourth test then. It was a puzzle. What was the answer?

  The more I thought about it, I had to wonder why the voice was telling me the nature of the tests as I passed them. Why had it said aggression demonstrated in understandable English? They had to be giving me clues on purpose. There was no reason, if the test was to be given blindly with the subject unaware, that they would give me such hints.

  The floor, by this time, had risen in temperature a good twenty degrees. My cooperation was to be forced.

  “I will agree, if I am allowed to ask a question for each that you ask,” I said.

  There was a hesitation. I suspected my response was being considered and weighed. Perhaps, it was being graded.

  “Bargaining demonstrated,” said the voice.

  Another door opened.

  I raised my eyebrows at that. “That’s it, eh?” I asked aloud. I supposed I had passed another test. I had passed it just by attempting negotiation. No questions came. There was no exchange of information. It had all been part of a test.

  I reached into the new room with a tender bare foot. The floor in my room had cooled now, but I figured it was time to move on. Each test had led me to a new room, and the old one had vanished. The penalty for staying in one place seemed clear: I would be dumped out of the ship to splatter on the ground a mile down. I walked into the room and looked at the opposite walls and the ceiling.

  “Who are you?” asked a woman’s voice behind me.

  I whirled and raised my shotgun reflexively. But I never quite aimed it at her, which was a good thing. She had a pistol leveled at me, and since mine wasn’t loaded anyway, I dropped the Remington.

  She nodded, staring with unblinking, intense eyes. “Good move. I almost blew you away.”

  She had been through some tests of her own. I could see it in her eyes. They were lovely, but haunted. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I stared at her. She was young, but not a kid. She was probably in her upper twenties. About ten years younger than me, I figured. She looked half Hispanic. It was a common look in California. She was shapely, and everything about her was attractive, even her disheveled, blood-matted hair which hung half-way down to her butt.

  My eyes ran downward. I couldn’t help it. Everything below the waist was just as shapely as the rest—and naked. There was a tiny tattoo down there, a butterfly I think, done in the traditional green. She wore nothing but a torn, white cotton blouse. The nights are often hot in California’s Central Valley. It was obvious she’d been plucked out her bed in the night, just as my family had.

  “Do you know anything?” I asked, forcing my eyes upward to meet hers. The fast question was an old trick I’d picked up while professoring. Lots of young women came to talk to their professor, and sometimes my eyes wandered. Asking a quick question usually got me out of an embarrassing moment when I was caught.

  “About what?” she asked.

  I noticed the barrel of her gun, which looked like a .38 revolver from here, had not wavered an inch. I swallowed. I hoped I wasn’t her test—what if she was supposed to blow me away to get to square seven?

  “About the tests.”

  She blinked. The barrel lowered, but only a fraction. I did a little amateur triangulating and I didn’t like where it was aiming now. I thought about telling her to put that thing away, but given the circumstances, she had every right to aim her pistol at my privates and we both knew it. Trust would have to be earned in this environment.

  “Tests? You mean this bullshit of doing whatever the ship wants to get to the next room alive?”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  The gun lowered a fraction more. She could still knee-cap me with a twitch of one finger. I hoped the .38 would eventually prove too heavy for her arms, but she looked like she worked out. She held it correctly too, bracing
her right wrist with her left hand. Someone had given her shooting lessons.

  She shook her head. “All I know is that if I hadn’t slept with this gun on my nightstand I’d be dead right now like my roommate.”

  “Roommate? Are you a college student?”

  “Yeah.”

  I nodded. “I teach at U. C. Merced.”

  Her eyes narrowed. The pistol came up again, squarely on my chest now. “This is taking too long. By this time, I should have seen a door open or something. You’re full of crap, aren’t you? You are like some kind of delay, some kind of distraction. If I kill you, I get to go to the next room, don’t I?”

  I lifted my hands a fraction, palms up. “Hold on, I’ve been through plenty of crap myself tonight. This ship killed both my kids. My shotgun is out of ammo, or we may have shot each other, that’s true. Maybe that’s what the ship wants, but I’m not killing any humans today. I’m only killing aliens.”

  She stared at me for a long second. Then she sighed and tilted her gun up so it pointed at the ceiling. She still gripped it in both hands, but we both relaxed. “What’s your name, Professor?” she asked.

  Two doors opened up then, as if on cue. We both tensed and whirled, but the rooms were empty. On the far side of the left room was a single point of light. A bright spot showed there, as if someone had drilled a hole in the side of the ship and it was brilliant daylight outside. Unless we had circumnavigated the globe, it couldn’t be light out yet, so I was suspicious.

  “Another test,” I said.

  “Ya think?”

  I glanced at her. “I’m Kyle Riggs, since you asked.”

  “Professor Kyle Riggs?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m Alessandra. Just call me Sandra. What do you teach?” she asked. She seemed honestly interested.

  “Computer science.”

  Sandra rocked back her head and laughed. It was a strange sound here. It seemed very out of place.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I think I signed up for your class next fall.”

  “Oh. Let’s hope we both make it to school next year, Sandra.”

  She nodded. “Which way, professor?”

  “I’d say we go away from that light. It seems like a trick. It can’t be daylight outside. I don’t get this test, but we have to go somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “They are already heating the floor.”

  I could feel it, now that she mentioned it. The floor was at least ten degrees warmer than it had been when I’d entered. We had to choose a room.

  I took a step forward into the room on the right, the dark one. Sandra was right behind me, but not close enough.

  The floor vanished in the room where we had met, beneath Sandra’s feet. I reached back my hand and caught her as she began to fall. It wasn’t a good hold, just her fingers. She dropped her gun. It went twirling down into the night.

  We were over the ocean, I realized. It seemed colder, too. The smell of the sea hit me, very strong and sudden. Had we moved north? The sea was dark, but not too far down. Maybe a hundred yards below, it was hard to tell. But it was far enough to kill anyone who took the fall. Water felt like concrete if you fell from high enough.

  I saw her face, looking up at me. Her mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even scream. She was working her other hand and both her feet to get a grip on the smooth metal of the ship.

  Cold salt breezes washed up into our faces. I thought we could do it. I was on my knees, bracing myself. It wouldn’t do either of us any good if I let her pull me down too, and we both fell into the sea. The problem was there wasn’t any lip to hold onto, no rim or door panel, not even a carpet to provide some friction. Just smooth metal that could change shape at will, like liquid.

  “Hold on, Sandra,” I shouted. “We can do this.”

  I had a plan. Really, I did. I would lie flat and hold onto her arms, letting her pull herself up over me. I thought she looked strong enough to manage it, with my help. I adjusted myself according to the plan, and then—

  The door vanished. The metal flowed together, very rapidly, as it had done many times before. One second it was there, the next it wasn’t.

  That wasn’t the bad part. The bad part came when I looked into my hand, where I still held four of her fingers. There was a ring on one of them, with an emerald in it. They were oozing blood, where they had been very neatly severed by the closing metal door.

  I sat up and rubbed Sandra’s fingers for a second before putting them down gently, making a little stack on the floor. I could hardly see. My eyes stung. I made a weird, howling sound.

  “Leadership demonstrated,” said the cold voice, speaking up for the first time in a while.

  -4-

  “Leadership?” I shouted at the walls. “So that’s what the test was about? You call that leadership?”

  The walls said nothing.

  “What happened to the interrogation, huh? You never even asked me any questions.”

  I felt like a crazy guy in a movie, shouting at the walls, shouting at God or the Devil or the voices his own mind. I think I truly was mad, in that moment of despair.

  Sadly, my mind worked on the puzzle. I couldn’t help it. I’m a computer guy, and a farmer, and both my occupations require a passion for problem-solving. I had completed a test for leadership. Meaning what? I had led Sandra out of the room. I had made the choice concerning which direction to take. She had followed me.

  So, she was a follower and had failed the test. If she had gone the other way, would they have let her live? Would they have put her through some other test or would we have both been failures, tossed down into the dark sea because neither of us could lead the other?

  “What the hell do you want?” I asked the quiet walls. I didn’t expect an answer. I was nearly broken now. Somehow, killing my kids had filled me with resolve, but getting me to make a decision which inadvertently had led to Sandra’s death, that was different. I supposed it was a matter of guilt. There wasn’t any logical reason to feel guilty about the fate of my kids. I’d done the best I could for them, given the circumstances.

  But I had failed Sandra. I hadn’t figured out the test. I should have known by all logic that we were facing death as we exited that last room. She had distracted me with her beauty and her nakedness. Just finding another human in this place had changed all the rules. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but it had. I’d dropped my guard, and so had she. We thought we could beat the place as a team, that we were stronger together.

  But the ship had had other plans. My black hatred for this monstrous machine was deeper than ever. I dearly hoped I would be given a chance to throttle the evil minds that had devised this place and these cruel tests.

  The ship remained silent, and the doors remained closed. I sat in my cube, uncaring. Was it giving me some grief-time? Was it programmed to allow for recovery after the worst shocks? It had done that before, I realized. It had waited until I had bandaged my wounds after fighting the centaurs. It had given Sandra and I time enough to talk and team up.

  I thought about the centaurs. I had begun to suspect that they were not behind all this. Some other creature was. Something else had set this up. I could not see how all of this made sense if the crew would endanger themselves. Perhaps the centaurs were only trained dogs. Or perhaps they were captives from their own world, like I was. For all I knew, the second one was the relative of the first, and I was the evil ape-creature that had cruelly killed them with insane bloodlust, from their point of view.

  I felt sick. For the first time, my resolve was weakening.

  “The subject will submit to interrogation,” said the voice, speaking up again at last. It said these words exactly as it had said them before. That got me thinking, hazily. Repeating oneself exactly, that was the kind of thing computers did. Being a computer scientist by training, I sensed I might be dealing with an artificial intelligence. This was not encouraging. Computers weren’t k
nown for their mercy.

  I scowled at the floor. Soon, as I said nothing, it began to heat up.

  “As I said before, I’ll answer questions only if you will let me ask some of my own.”

  There was a pause, then: “Tenacity demonstrated.”

  A door opened. I heaved a sigh and struggled to my feet. How many of these tests were there?

  I cautiously stepped forward. The next room wasn’t a cubical. It was larger and rectangular with a domed ceiling. I suspected every inch of it. I walked cautiously around this new cage, prepared to leap away from any threat.

  “All tests complete. You have been selected for advancement.”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “You may now command us.”

  I paused. Another test?

  “Command you?”

  “Yes.”

  It was talking back. We were in a new room, but I had been fooled before. I thought about it. What if I only got to give one command? What if that was the test, to figure out what I would do in this situation? What did I want? Until now, there had been nothing resembling conversation with these monsters. I hated to admit it, but this change gave me hope. Somewhere deep down I believed it was all another test, however. The floor might vanish at any second.

  I thought about asking it to let me go. That seemed simple enough. I’d have to be careful, or it might just dump me out a mile high over a rocky mountain range or the Antarctic. Each time I looked down, it seemed like the ship was over a different spot.

  I wondered then how long I had to think it over before it considered me a loser. Perhaps I needed to give it a command. Anything, just to make it happy. But what should I tell it to do?

  Then I had it. Why not go for broke?

  “I command you to go back and pick up my children and revive them,” I said. It was crazy, but who knew what their tech was capable of? Maybe, just maybe, there was a thread of mercy in these beings, or at least some strange concept of honor amongst them. Maybe they gave every contest winner a single wish, a prize for having won through to the end. I tried not to let my hopes rise, but I couldn’t help it.