by Sean O'Brien
“No. But I am surprised that you admit Ship saved the rest of us.”
“I accept the theory for now. I have no compelling proof of it, but I will accept your theory until more facts come to light.”
Iede turned to face her completely. “Before we left you said that Ship was deserted, that it was a lifeless hulk floating around in orbit. Do you still think so? Did you ever think so? How can you, a scientist, deny facts that are right in front of you merely because they lead to a conclusion you do not wish to draw?”
“I don’t know what happened that day. Maybe Ship didn’t intervene. Maybe it did, but only on some automated system that we can’t understand. But if there are gods on board, and they chose to save our lives but not Viktur’s, then they are no gods of mine.”
“It is presumptuous to try and understand the will of the gods. I do not fully understand why they sent me back to explore these ruins, but I go at their bidding. Can we condemn them for failing to save the life of one man when they saved three others?”
“If I believed in them, I would send them all to hell. You should be thankful that I don’t,” Sirra said, turning her back on Iede and Fozzoli and pulling the thin blanket snugly around her.
The party arrived midmorning at the coordinates Iede’s map designated. Fozzoli, Iede, and Sirra clambered out of the vehicle and helped Khadre extricate herself. The old scientist seemed appreciably stiffer and more tired than the others but brushed off questions about her health with remarks regarding the upcoming survey.
Iede scanned the landscape, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun. She had not truly expected to find tall alien monuments reaching skyward in fantastic splendor but could not help but feel a twinge of disappointment at the bare horizon. The terrain seemed even more inhospitable than several of the places they had traveled through on their way. Rough-hewn rock formations broke up the hilly countryside, and gnarled Kentleigh trees twisted towards the sky like arthritic fingers.
Iede sighed quietly, lifted her face skyward, and intoned the prayer of guidance. She faltered in the middle of the prayer, imagining Aywon’s disapproving face watching her from the observation room. She smiled at the sky and said quietly, “All right, Aywon. No more prayers. I suppose I should just help with the survey equipment.” She turned back towards the airfoil and blinked in surprise. Sirra was standing not two meters behind her, staring at her in disgust.
“You were praying,” Sirra said, her comment more a statement than a question.
“Not exactly. How can I help you?”
“You can’t. This is scientific. You just watch.”
“There is nothing I can do to help?” Iede spread her arms.
Sirra crossed hers. “No. If you really want to help, just stay out of the way. Let us do our work.”
“It would seem, ha’lyneice, that your cult is more exclusive than mine.”
Sirra scowled and stepped closer. “What do you want from me, Iede? I’ve come all the way out here to test your domed ‘vision’ against reality. I’ve even brought in two others, one of whom is still young enough to be impressionable, and by the way I don’t really appreciate you brainwashing him—”
Iede’s outstretched hands rotated, palms up, as if deflecting Sirra’s ranting. “Sirra, please. You can’t believe that a few days of casual conversation about my lifestyle—”
“Your religion. Call it what it is.”
“—Religion, then, could fundamentally change his belief system? And even if it could, that would be his choice.”
“Not when you fill his head with lies and distortions, half-truths and—”
“None of what I say is a lie.”
Sirra’s jaw twitched. She said softly, through clenched teeth, “No, I suppose not. Not when you yourself believe it so fully.” Her voice rose again. “But just because you believe it doesn’t make it true.”
“Of course not.”
Sirra’s eyes widened at this. “What?”
Iede laughed gently. “You think I believe in my religion out of blind faith? I have arrived at this stage in my spiritual growth through dedicated study, prayer, meditation, and finally, in an incontrovertible, empirical experience aboard Ship. I know what I believe in is true through thought, prayer, and experience. That’s why I believe in it—because it is true. Not the other way around.”
Sirra’s head shook slowly, softly, her eyes moving evenly in their sockets to stay fixed on Iede.
“I might add, ha’lyneice, that you should take your own advice. Just because you do not believe in something doesn’t make it false.”
“Hey! Ladies! You care to lend a hand over here?” Fozzoli’s petulant voice sliced through the tension between the two old women, and they both walked back towards the airfoil to help the young scientist set up his survey equipment.
“You take a look, then,” Fozzoli said, more than a little irritation in his voice. He withdrew from the eyepiece and let Sirra examine the data. Iede and Khadre watched, the former still serene despite the nine hours of work it had taken to arrive at their first dubious finding. Iede looked at Khadre, still not daring to speak.
Khadre must have felt Iede’s gaze on her, for she turned and met her eyes. “I think they’ve found something.”
“I see,” Iede said. She had not been offered much information, but was content. She had learned all she needed to from Aywon.
Khadre seemed to interpret her remark as a request for explanation. “They’ve found some trace amounts of an alloy that should not occur naturally. At least, I think that’s what they’ve found. None of us are really skilled in this field, so we can’t be sure. But if it is an artificial alloy, someone must have created it. Which lends credence to your, uh, thoughts about the ruins.”
Iede nodded. Khadre opened her mouth again, then closed it and turned to watch Sirra and Fozzoli.
Sirra leaned back from the eyepiece. “I don’t see how we can tell. So you found something that registers on the mass spectrometer as an iron-carbon alloy. So? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. And even if it is, how do we know it isn’t a natural occurrence?”
“No way. No way this happens this close to the surface.” Fozzoli was shaking his head violently.
“But we don’t even know if we’re reading the instruments properly.”
Now Fozzoli looked at Sirra with contempt. “I know how to read a mass spectrometer, Doctor. Iron-carbon admixture. No doubt. In more than trace amounts.”
Iede did not understand the science, but Fozzoli’s voice was all she needed to hear to know that the devices he had planted in the ground had come up with something.
“Pardon my ignorance,” Iede said, causing her halfonlyniece to turn to her and scowl, “but what is the significance of this find? What do you mean, an iron-carbon alloy?”
Sirra exchanged glances with Fozzoli and seemed to resign herself to the discovery. Iede noted without pleasure that her halfonlyniece appeared defeated even as she answered the question.
“Steel.”
Chapter 26
The survey group changed position a dozen times before they found it.
Sirra could no longer pretend that Fozzoli was reading the instruments incorrectly, especially when Khadre had gently confirmed his results after the third site. Iede had not gloated, Sirra had to admit, but her ha’lyaunt’s calm self-assurance was nonetheless grating.
After the sixth change in location, Fozzoli was no longer grumbling about the work involved in loading the survey equipment, shifting their position a few kilometers, and unloading again. He was far too excited about the discoveries. Even Khadre was energetic, helping Fozzoli calibrate the samplers with each shift. Sirra helped, but her mind was elsewhere.
“You don’t seem excited, Sirra,” Iede said, sidling up to her as the others took more readings of the deep soil. “Are you still skeptical?”
Sirra fought back anger. “No. But your explanation is still not the only one. Just because we have found what you said we would doe
sn’t mean your religion is correct.”
“I see that Occam’s Razor needs some sharpening to cut through your ideology,” Iede said, chuckling. “Yes: I could be a clairvoyant, gaining this knowledge through some supernatural, mystical source. Or I might simply be the luckiest person ever born, to have randomly picked a spot on this vast planet that happens to contain these artifacts. Or—”
“Don’t be so smug, Iede. You could quite simply have been given this information by some other scientists. Planet-bound ones, I mean.”
“But if that is so, what motivation would I have to drag all of you self-admitted non-experts out here to confirm something that is already known?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you always say that the gods work in mysterious ways?”
“Not at all. Their ways are not mysterious to those who watch.”
Sirra sighed and shook her head. “You’ve got an answer to everything. That’s why I am scared of your religion.”
“Because it provides answers?”
“Because it provides all the answers. Doubt and uncertainty are what drive us to learn more. If I thought I knew everything there was to know, I wouldn’t seek, I wouldn’t grow. That’s why religion is so dangerous.”
Iede seemed to think about that for a moment, and Sirra felt a faint twinge of hope. She had not realized until she felt the hope swelling in her that she had been, not just haranguing her ha’lyaunt, but trying to convert her away from her religion.
“You may be correct, Sirra, but you still should be willing to admit that I have done what I said I would. You have found the evidence. Can you still deny that I have been to Ship to visit with those within her?”
“No.”
“Then why do you still resist?”
“I’m angry at them.”
“Why?”
Sirra glanced up, as if to show everyone in Ship (yes, she admitted, she believed. She would not be a scientist if she simply denied the evidence. In the absence of a simpler, more compelling conclusion, she had to admit that there was a Ship and most likely it was still staffed) that she defied them even while acknowledging them. “Because I wanted us to find this ourselves. We would have, eventually. Why do your gods want to interfere?”
“You would rather they had left us to our own devices.”
“Of course. I don’t want to owe them anything.” Even as she said it, Sirra knew what Iede would say. Sirra turned away and looked pointedly at Fozzoli and Khadre, waiting the inevitable response.
“Anything more, you mean.”
Sirra closed her eyes and saw Viktur’s body being shredded by gunfire from the Dome flyer, heard his screams, the splashing of the waves, the relentless staccato sound of the drone’s guns.
Iede walked halfway around Sirra and said, “Why are we here, Sirra?”
Sirra opened her eyes and the nightmare almost faded. “What?”
“Why are we still here? Surely, we have enough to go back and report our findings. What do we wait for?”
“I…don’t know. There’s something still here. I want to find it.”
“How do you know?”
“The same way I know how to speak to the vix. I just know.”
“Now who is the mystical one?” Iede chided, and Sirra could not help but grin.
“All right, Dome you, I get it. Let’s see what the others have found.”
At the twelfth site two days later, Khadre and Fozzoli were still glued to their instruments, talking excitedly in the language of science. Iede had raised the prospect of returning to the city to restock, and Sirra had to agree with her. The party had not bothered to forage, even if they could, and their supplies were running low. The trip back would take a minimum of three days, and the group had almost exhausted its field supplies.
“Let us stay here, then,” Fozzoli said during their sparse dinner. “Khadre and I will keep working while you go back and get more food.”
“That’s six days, Foz,” Sirra said. “You’ve barely got enough for three as it is. You’re going to stay out here for three days without food or water?”
Fozzoli didn’t answer.
“And it’s more than the food and water. We need to find out what has been happening back home.”
“I think she’s right, Foz,” Khadre said softly. “We have to go back. But I want to be on the return team,” she said, looking at Sirra.
“Me, too,” Fozzoli insisted.
Sirra spread her hands. “I don’t make that decision. Besides, our place is in the water.”
Fozzoli considered that. “Sirra, I think….” He stopped, looking at Khadre for help.
“Foz and I have been thinking about that. We want to postpone our marine studies for a while. We think that this discovery takes precedence.”
Sirra fought to keep her face free from emotion. “We’re not specialists, Khadre. We don’t know much more than Iede here,” she said. She looked at her ha’lyaunt and added awkwardly, “no offense.”
Iede just nodded.
“Besides, I was on the verge of something with Vogel. I want to get back to that.”
“The interdiction is still on,” Fozzoli said.
Sirra snorted. “Not after this. You think the Coordinator will keep his ban on research after we bring back this data?”
Khadre shrugged. “Who knows? But Foz and I are agreed. We want to come back here.”
Sirra looked at Fozzoli. “I won’t stop you, Foz.”
“Look, Sirra, it’s just for a little while. I’ll be back with you before you—”
“It’s all right, Foz,” she said, trying to conceal her pain. He wasn’t really betraying her personally.
But she was not quite able to believe that.
Three hours before the four of them had agreed to leave the survey site and return to civilization, the core sampler sounded a tone it had not used before. Fozzoli and Khadre exchanged worried glances. “That better not be the ‘I’m broken’ sound.” Fozzoli stopped the drill and examined the display. He fell silent.
“What?” Khadre said, moving towards him.
“I’m not sure,” Fozzoli said slowly. “I think it’s telling me there is a…pocket, or something.”
“Like natural gas? Or water?”
Now Sirra and Iede moved closer.
“Uh…” Fozzoli manipulated the readout controls. “No. There’s nothing. Just air.”
Iede asked, “Do air pockets occur naturally underground?”
The three marine biologists looked helplessly at one another. Sirra chuckled under her breath. “We finally find something worthwhile and none of us knows enough to verify it.” She glanced at the readout. “Ninety meters down, give or take. Anyone want to start digging?” She chuckled again. “Ninety meters. Might as well be on Ship itself, eh, Iede?”
“No. I’ve been to Ship.”
“You don’t think they can help us, do you?” Sirra asked, surprised at herself. She had meant the question to come out dripping with sarcasm, but she found herself waiting for an answer.
“They don’t work that way,” was Iede’s brief reply.
“Wait a second. I think this thing has a camera feature. We might be able to get some pictures of what’s down there,” Fozzoli said, reading the technical file on the sampler’s help program. He gingerly made some adjustments to the sampler settings. The holodata vanished, to be replaced by a blinking question mark cursor.
“I think the camera is just a flat pic. Not a holo. I’ll display it here,” Fozzoli said, pointing at the sampler’s tiny video screen. The four crowded around as Fozzoli manipulated the low-resolution camera hub around, the dedicated floodlight casting a fuzzy white circle of light on jagged rock.
“Can you clean this up at all?” Sirra asked. Khadre examined the controls and made a few changes. The image instantly cleared but showed nothing discernible.
“The computer is recording all of this, I hope,” Fozzoli said.
Khadre coughed. “Foz, I have a small amount
of experience with these kinds of machines.”
“Core drilling samplers?” Fozzoli said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“No, but I do know how to operate a few remote cameras. Since my diving days are long over, that’s about all I can do. If you don’t mind….”
Fozzoli hastily moved out of the way. Khadre took over and after a moment’s study, touched a single button. “I’ve set the camera on automatic sweep. The computer will build up a holo representation of the camera’s findings as soon as it can, and we’ll be able to see what’s down there. I’ve also keyed in infrared, but I doubt that’ll help.”
Sirra shivered. Something had occurred to her, but she was not altogether sure she wanted to act on her instinct. She suppressed the thought, but it continued to gnaw at her.
The camera made short work of whatever it was scanning, and Khadre announced half an hour later, “Done. Here’s what it found.” A holo image sprang into view amongst the four surveyors.
The chamber was, as far as Sirra could tell, part of a tunnel. The walls were too smooth to be natural, and appeared to be reinforced by beams or pylons. A straight track, with regularly spaced plates of unidentifiable material, lay on the bottom of the chamber. All in all, the tunnel segment was roughly fifteen meters in diameter.
“It’s a subway system,” Khadre whispered.
Fozzoli nodded. “What kind of propulsion, do you think?”
“I’ve no idea. Maglev, maybe. Those plates.”
Iede spoke. Although her voice was as soft as ever, her sudden involvement in the conversation make the others start. “Why would you assume that?”
“Well, those plates look a little like….” Khadre said, then laughed at herself. “I see what you mean. No, Iede, I should have kept to my original statement. I have no idea what the propulsion system is.”
“Or even if it is a subway system.”
“Correct. Thank you for being a pure scientist.”.