by Bill Adams
The lake was a hundred meters below.
“What—what’s it all about, Park?” Bunny asked, looking downward and then trying to find some purchase with his boots.
“The elegant thing about this friction loop,” I said, “is that it’s likely to go slack and slip off once you’ve hit the water. The belts will sink out of sight before they can contradict my story that you fell while climbing. Stop that scrambling, Bunny! If necessary, I can kick you in the head, and claim you bounced off the rocks before going in.”
“But, but—my head—what happened?” Bunny dug the fingers of his free hand into a crevice.
“You picked a fight with me, remember?”
“I—yes, I hit you with the Cobra Opening, but, but—you were so fast…”
“Actually, I thought my Mongoose Riposte was a little rusty. Shih Ho is so out of date. But at least I stopped short of killing you. A mistake I can correct—unless you’re prepared to tell me what I want to know.”
“You’re not going to—”
“Yesterday someone dropped me from two thousand meters. I am more angry than amused, Bunny. I want some answers.
“Turn your mind back to our flight here. Something out there in the marsh shows a signal flare whenever anyone flies over at night. Almost as though it’s waiting for some particular passenger to signal back. You remember what happened when we saw that flare?”
“Park, I can’t—”
“Better try, Bunny. Otherwise I know a quick way to make your whole life pass before your eyes.”
“All right, all right, the running lights went out.”
“More precisely, you turned them out. But why should there be anyone out there for you to signal? Why should Sir Max take the risk of putting more men in place, if he expects to have this planet turned over to him legally in a month or two? The answer, I found out yesterday, is that he’s already lost his title challenge in court. So a crew has to empty his barrow for him right now, and their presence makes it even more important that you and I divert the archaeologists.
“That would explain why you’re not worried about getting offplanet in time; the crew you went out to meet last night must be able to arrange its own transportation. But here’s the puzzle. For some reason, I have not been clued in. In fact, I seem to be expendable. I don’t understand that part, Bunny. Explain it to me. Now.”
Velasquez’s boots scrabbled at the ledge again, and he slipped down a few inches. I leaned back to take more of his weight and saw ripples radiate across the dead lake from the pebbles he’d shaken loose, the splashing noises arriving a second later.
“You’ve got it all wrong!” he said finally. “It wasn’t me on the flitter, it was her, the Foyle woman, she slapped my hand down as I reached for a map. It was deliberate, Park! I thought, like you, a signal.”
“Weak,” I said. “Do better.”
“So who could have been down there? Who camps on the ridge and admits to wandering around at night? Mishima, of course. And who could smuggle out whatever he found? Foyle, in her freighter. That’s the only way to work a secret dig, you’d need at least two. Well, wouldn’t you?”
“Keep talking. And quieter. She would see her partner every day, wouldn’t she, Bunny? What would she need to signal him about at night?”
There were beads of sweat on his forehead, but he was looking up with more confidence now.
“About us, Park! We weren’t supposed to come to the site at all, remember? The Foyle woman had been scheduled to put us off with a briefing at the hotel. She and Mishima could have arranged an emergency signal in case that fell through, a warning that she wasn’t coming back alone, that he should cover up their dig and get back to camp. Come on, Park, let me up before we have an accident.”
“Speaking of accidents—”
“What happened to the flitter, you mean? Well, it doesn’t make any sense your way—does it? In your fairy tale, I have more reason than ever to want you around, in authority, to protect the secret dig. But, but remember, alien artifacts have to be turned over to the Commission for next to no compensation. So it’s pothunters, smugglers, who would want you to have an accident, thinking you a real commissioner. Face it, it makes sense!”
“What were you doing up here last night, then?”
“Spying on Mishima, of course. And, and if anyone gimmicked the flitter, he’s the one; he was hanging around it just before you left.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Nothing, I got lost. That’s why I came back this morning, I thought I’d go through his tent. That’s what you should be doing!”
It was no good. I had to let him up before my hands grew too tired. Unfortunately, he hadn’t told me anything new; the flitter saboteur had to have been around to screw up the Otis module weeks before, so I’d never really thought it was Bunny. But the accusation should have shaken something out of him; for instance—
“Why did Condé lie about his claim?” I demanded. “What’s the good of our stalling the dig if he’ll never get possession anyway?”
Bunny just shook his head, and whimpered when that made him slide another notch. “Where do you get your information? Mehta’s people? What they don’t know is, the fix is in. Sir Max will win on appeal.”
I stood and hauled him up next to me. He lay at full length, gasping as though he’d just swum twenty laps. We stared each other in the eyes, each with his own reasons for self-disgust. Still, a terrorized Bunny was probably safer company.
“All right,” I said. “I’m willing to check your story. Let’s go search Mishima’s tent. You play lookout.”
◆◆◆
Mishima pitched a neat camp and kept his personal effects tidy. “Personal” is the wrong word; it was all generic camping gear, except for a few books and his passport disk.
I was surprised he didn’t carry the disk with him; if it was a phony, though, he might value it less. There were a few lines of Interlingua on the plastic case. MISHIMA KEN was indeed his name, reversed that way because HONSHU was his home planet. His coloring was about right, but wasn’t he awfully big for a colonial descendant of Old Japan? No, I was thinking like a classicist; when I’m not a hundred years out of date, I’m more like two thousand.
The books were not without interest. A contemporary translation of the Bhagavad Gita, in appalling Alexandrines, and Xenophon’s Anabasis in sturdy Ur-Linguish, probably the most recent rendering. Character clues? Also confirmation that he was a genuine student of the past, though arguably just faking it on literary knowledge, like me. He hadn’t jumped into the archaeological end of the previous morning’s discussion.
What I did not find was the skeleton coder. I figured that a cybersabotage tool would be no larger than a pistol, and probably smaller, for concealment. What had made Mishima’s outfit look so much like a uniform? A tool belt, with pouches and holsters. As long as he wore that, he had little reason to leave the skeleton coder here.
I slipped out of the tent and—courtesy of Velasquez’s keen sentry work—bumped directly into Ken Mishima.
Stiffened fingers stabbed at my eyes.
Mishima’s instinctive attack was something very like the Cobra Opening so recently demonstrated for me in slow motion. The forearm block was still fresh in my mind, as quick as if practiced for years.
I heard a surprised grunt at the impact. But if Mishima hadn’t pulled short his follow-up blow, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. He was amazingly fast for a big man, and in perfect training.
He stepped back a pace and nodded once, as if to ratify a truce. Each of us rubbed a sore arm.
“My compliments on your proficiency,” he said softly. “It would be embarrassing to blind a government official. I apologize—for not expecting you in my private tent. Nothing personal.”
“Sorry I startled you,” I answered. “My aide should have warned you I was waiting here. He was at the end of the path a moment ago…”
“Ah,” Mish
ima said. After a moment he added, “He took off as I approached. Downhill toward camp. It may have been the noise.”
“Noise?”
He cocked his head and stared into the middle distance. “It’s not audible now. The Otis system. When she first started it up, it was quite loud.”
“Foyle has it working?”
He nodded, expressionless.
“I have to go,” I said. “We can talk another time.”
He looked through the tent flap at his effects, then back at me. “I look forward to it.”
◆◆◆
As soon as I was out of Mishima’s sight, I began to run. Downhill all the way, but I was still out of breath by the time I reached the larger camp.
I found only two of the archaeologists there, and no one else. Helen Hogg-Smythe was fidgeting behind the wheel of a terrain buggy while Friar Francisco slowly bore away its old battery. She waved her metal crook at me as he disappeared into the main storage tent.
“Hello, Commissioner! We were wondering where you’d got to. We’ll give you a ride in a moment. You know how it is. Our batteries only run down once a week or so, but they pick the minute to do so with fiendish cunning. I must say, if your Citizen Velasquez hadn’t taken the other four-seater in such a hurry—”
“And just where are we all going?” I said. The Green monk had reemerged with a replacement battery.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, you don’t know. It’s good news! Foyle has repaired the Otis system after all. Just like that! Though actually, you deserve most of the credit. She said your efforts had quite restored the unit’s integrity. But—this is really rather humorous—it apparently also restored someone’s old password system to working order.” She laughed. “The perils of rental equipment! Well, cheer up, Commissioner—we’re in business again.”
“I specifically told her that even if she thought she’d fixed the unit, I—”
“There, there, Commissioner, don’t worry. Foyle is quite a responsible person. She knows better than to start digging around the artifacts themselves without some sort of field test. And you know, she thought of the cleverest thing.”
“Yes?” There was no point in flying off the handle. We weren’t going anywhere until Friar Francisco had the new battery locked down.
“A riddle for you, Commissioner. What is Foyle going to attempt to move? The perfect test. What is roughly the same size and composition as a Stone Hut, but much more delicate? More delicate, but also completely expendable, should the Otis mishandle it? Think, now.”
For real-life riddles, just apply both Occam and Murphy—the simplest solution is the worst thing you can imagine.
“She’s going to move the balancing rock formation.”
“Got it, first try! And with such certainty, too. Isn’t she clever? But she is impetuous. She won’t wait all day for us, Friar Francisco!”
The monk was going about his task with the Zenlike deliberation of his order, spiritually at one with every lug nut. Without actually striking him, I managed to take over completely. Thirty seconds later the battery was connected and we were tearing up a new ridge path at devil-may-care speeds, Hogg-Smythe driving not as elderly people usually do, but as they logically should. I did not complain.
◆◆◆
Everyone, even Mishima by now, was waiting for us on the crest of the ridge. It was a flattop just sharp-edged enough to be called a plateau, no more than thirty meters in diameter, with a path leading into dense scrubwood on the prairie side and an unobstructed view of the lake and marsh on the other. We pulled up next to the other large terrain buggy, near one edge. Most of the pedestrians stood nearby, also out of the way.
The balancing rock was a narrow concatenation of slabs and boulders—sandstone, schist, and quartz, orange and dun and dirty white. Its knife shape sliced fifteen meters into the big blue sky, and a high breeze whistled along the edges of the blade, above the thrum of engines and the snarl of human arguments.
We had arrived just in time. Foyle, her red hair a flickering blaze, was at the helm of the Otis system’s half-track, using a control panel to coordinate the movements of the small slave units. A dozen of these swarmed about the column like black ants about to haul a twig. Those on treads dug and probed around its base. Others hovered on jets of air, and some had unfolded their legs into amazingly high stilts. As Hogg-Smythe set our parking brake, the stilts linked up to each other with lateral extensors and formed a lattice all the way around the rock, which now resembled a building under repair, surrounded by scaffolding. Flexible tentacles with rubberized palps at the ends reached out and wrapped around the circumference of the tower at a score of places, to ever so gently test and tighten…
But then Bunny, still arguing, climbed onto the hood of the half-track, interfering with Foyle’s view, and the operation came to a halt. I rushed up to meet them. Ariel had been at Bunny’s side until his ascent, tugging at his sleeve, but not clearly in opposition. She looked relieved to see me.
“I wish you’d waited,” I told Foyle.
Those green eyes had an extra tilt when narrowed in anger. She was dressed for work, in heavy brown fabric. A huge backpack frame lay next to the driver’s seat, bristling with the tools of her trade, even a padded locker for her chemicals. She had all the momentum of will and purpose; a little moral judo was called for.
“I suppose you want to stop me, too?” she said.
“Why?” I asked. “Isn’t this what we’re here for?”
Bunny made a noise as if he’d been stabbed.
I stepped up onto the half-track and stood next to Foyle as Velasquez said, “Commissioner, I don’t think you realize the situation. This balancing rock formation isn’t part of the archaeological site at all, but a feature of natural beauty that Senator Mehta is bound to want untouched. If this woman destroys it—seemingly under your supervision—the Commission could be held liable!”
Not bad at all, for impromptu. It wasn’t lack of intelligence that made Bunny a fool. I wondered how much he knew about the secret we were supposed to protect here.
“I don’t have any specific instructions about the rock,” Ariel said. “But it is picturesque, and this is an area that the senator and his guests will visit. It’s really up to you, Commissioner. If you think that this field test is necessary before work can begin on the dig proper, well, the excavation has top priority. And for all I know, Foyle can do just what she says she can, move the rock and put it back in place without damaging it.”
“That’s the whole point,” Foyle insisted. “I can. And once I’ve proven that, we won’t have to worry when we move more durable structures like the Huts.”
“I appreciate your concern, Bunny. But I think you’re underestimating Citizen Foyle.” I turned to her and put an avuncular hand on her shoulder; she flinched with surprise, but accepted it, raising her chin at Bunny. “My aide is just thinking about how destructive an Otis can be in the hands of an inexperienced operator. And he’s right. I’m sure we all remember the Phaiacian disaster. All those relics destroyed.” No one said anything, but since I was looking at Foyle she felt obliged to nod her head.
I went on, as if to Bunny now, meeting his betrayed stare. “But we all learned from Phaiacia, Bunny! We know what they did wrong, we know the manipulations to avoid. Citizen Foyle, why don’t you just point out the differences between your approach and the old method?”
“The old method?” she repeated.
“Or simply indicate the pronations we all stay away from, since Phaiacia.”
“Well, of course, I don’t remember the specific hangup they had at, urm, Phaiacia, but—”
“ ‘Hangup’ is a mild term,” I said jovially, “for twenty dead and four bodies never recovered. But I’m sure you remember the basic configuration. Now, compare that with the, I must say, almost identical pattern you seem to be following here…”
“Actually,” she admitted, “I’m not sure I ever heard of a planet called Phaiac
ia, but—”
I removed my hand from her shoulder. With wounded incredulity: “Never even heard of…”
Everyone stared at her until she flushed. “Oh, for God’s sake!”
“Recall, Excellency,” said Bunny, “that this is an amateur expedition.”
“I owe you an apology, Bunny,” I replied stiffly. “Still, we must do what we can…”
“Form an oversight committee to schedule everything in advance—” he suggested.
“Go over the manuals with all operators, establish a comprehensive training program—”
“Have to draw one up ourselves, but that shouldn’t take more than three or four weeks—”
“And only another month to implement—”
“With me staying on after your departure, Excellency. To, uh—”
“Expedite things.”
“Precisely.”
“Shit!” Foyle slumped into the driver’s seat. “Bureaucrats!” she added, and this exhausted her fund of obscenities. She punched buttons to recall the slave units.
Anger may have made her careless. The mechanical creatures fell back, but somewhere above us a tentacle slapped the rock as it retracted—not hard, but high up, where leverage was greatest.
With a high-pitched grating sound, the tower of stone slowly toppled over, falling straight toward the half-track.
Foyle and I, nervous types, made it off the vehicle in an instant. Ariel ran before us, looking backward. Bunny, facing the wrong way on the hood, was slow on the uptake and couldn’t seem to move once he had turned. It didn’t matter.
The tower came to a stop in midair, without a sound. It stood leaning over the half-track at an impossible forty-five-degree angle, and stayed that way. It held together, too; not a pebble had departed from the main mass.