I resolved to begin filling in some pre-emptive transfer paperwork: someone with that kind of wan boniness seems unsuited to this kind of environment. I give him weeks at the most. He has very odd eyes, one green and one blue, which I took for a defect, but he assured me his eyesight is normal.
He was alert and confident at least, though the look on his face when I showed him the administrative backlog he needed to clear almost made me feel sorry for him.
He told me his name is Mason and that he is from the Home Peninsula, though he doesn’t seem to have the maddening air of superiority that comes with growing up in Karume. I’ve had to deal with it my whole career – unimaginative, tunnel-eyed, third-rate scientists elevated to positions beyond their ability because they know the right people. Fermin’s greasy face springs to mind; I wish it wouldn’t.
On the contrary, he is polite and quietly set to work with a minimum of orientation. Perhaps he can be useful, if only in sparing me from the baser tasks.
Sleep 38 – 498
The de-icing is proceeding. The diggers still witter on about density and drainage and other such things, but I have become very good at redirecting them to my new assistant. They seem to like him better anyway.
The level of the ice has dropped considerably, and we have access to roughly two-thirds of the chamber. The curvature continued as I predicted, but what I had assumed to be an unusually even ice stalactite has turned out to be part of the structure itself, a kind of tapering pillar in the exact centre. This makes the chamber a toroid, not an oblate spheroid. I have had a platform anchored at the equator which will give us an excellent vantage on the rest of the chamber.
Sleep 50 – 498
I am having trouble sleeping. Perhaps setting down the figures that keep running through my head will clear it. It feels like the lowest kind of psychobabble, but there you have it. I must be getting old.
The toroid chamber has a radius of exactly 10 metres from the inner skin to the assumed centre inside the pillar, which itself has a radius of 2 metres at its thinnest point. This makes the rounded volume of the whole chamber 1,985 metres cubed and the surface area 947 metres squared.
The inner skin is a composite of tungsten, steel and some other material we have yet to identify, though even the basic tests have shown behaviour different to that of any other known metal. Whatever it is, it is both very hard and highly pliant as well as having very low conductivity. This explains why even the plasma lance struggled to cut through.
I have no idea yet what it could be, so my mind wanders into the realm of guesswork. The thing is well made, enough to keep it intact for all those cold centuries. It is isolated, buried underground even before the ice shifted over it. Was it hidden? There is no obvious access point, as if human ingress was not a part of the design. It’s as if the place has been locked away, never meant to be opened.
I remind the little, irrational part of my mind not to jump to conclusions. The reality is that the place is impressive but has no more life in it than any other pre-Ruin site (most of which are little more than a series of walls and ditches).
I remain optimistic. I have to believe my vindication lies under the ice.
Sleep 52 – 498
Despite my initial reservations, Mason acclimatised fast to his position, and I can admit in private that he has made life here more bearable. He has a talent for organisation and a strong work ethic – rarely do I finish for the day and find him not at his workstation or waiting at my door for a signature on this order or that invoice. I don’t let on that I am impressed to avoid complacency. I don’t want a rerun of the Melthum debacle.
When we speak, work is the only subject and this arrangement seems to suit both of us. He keeps himself private, for the most part, though the few times I have seen him interacting with others he has shown an easy manner that people warm to. His face is, I suppose, of a pleasing cast, and despite my initial assessment of him as bony, his body has a wiry fitness to it. He moves well; I suppose you could call it poise. I have caught myself watching him a few times, though he hasn’t noticed.
Both of my researchers seem to like him – the male one sees him as a source of good old-fashioned bonhomie and dotes on him. This amuses me no end: from the misty looks the female one throws at my new assistant, the two of them are doubtless fucking. The blind idiot has no idea his new friend is helping himself to the goods!
Let it continue, for now – her work rate has improved, at least – but if it turns into a saga, I’ll have to put an end to it.
Sleep 56 – 498
Insufferable meteorologist! Cease my work? The gall of it!
I’m sure I had a reason to include him on the team, though I struggle to remember it. He has an official position at the Elucidon and does not fall under my authority, so I can’t just swat him away. The man has become insufferable as the days have grown colder, his protestations about continuing with the work growing from notes to letters and through to verbal altercations.
The Death is on its way. I am not a simpleton; I know how the seasons proceed. I reminded him that the base was built to deal with the cold, and besides, the object of study is well below the surface, away from both wind and precipitation. With the new sealed tunnels no one would need to be outside at all.
It wasn’t enough. He persisted in his whiny, pathetic voice, so nasal I kept checking around to see if an insect had somehow survived the trip and was buzzing around in the corners.
To shut him up (if only for a while) I agreed to call a meeting of the research staff, who I am sure will want to persist with the task at hand.
ADDENDUM
I am to be abandoned, it seems, by ungrateful wretches who have no loyalty.
I called the little meeting and asked my staff if they would stay through the cold months. I thought I knew my people, thought they valued discovery and knowledge as highly as I do. A little weather wouldn’t be enough to scare them.
I was wrong.
They overwhelmingly voted to leave, and I had to concede – what option did I have? To do otherwise would only have ended in either mutiny or apathy, neither of which would get us anywhere. The meteorologist with the voice like a beetle stood off to one side with a face that made me, a woman not given to violence, want to slap him senseless.
They are packing up now, ready to leave in three days. Good riddance to them. The two idiots even deigned to look guilty when I told them I was staying – obviously not guilty enough! They changed their tune when I assured them I would withdraw my endorsement from their respective theses and notify the faculty that they were unfit for further advancement. The outrage on their faces was worth it.
Mason is staying. He came up and told me so. I replied that I expected no less, though inside I was glad that I wouldn’t be completely devoid of human contact for the next few months. I asked if he would not rather follow his new ‘friend’ back to Karume, to shack up there with her, but he shrugged as if it were nothing important.
Death 20 – 498
The cold seeps into everything and I haven’t seen Ras for an age. The constant whistling of the wind hitting the side of the outpost is driving me to distraction. When we are not down in the chamber we play music over the intercom (the usual, State stuff: tinny, dull, but better than nothing). I have taken to wearing furs even when in my room and office; even more layers go on if we venture down.
I’m afraid I am prey to base superstition. Since I was abandoned I’ve found something disquieting about the empty corridors. The torus chamber is the worst, despite the extensive lighting I had installed. The shadows skeet unnaturally over the surfaces and the sounds are odd, muted. I do not like it. I spend the minimum possible time there and never go alone.
I was trying my best to avoid outright asking Mason to come with me every time, but somehow he always seems to find a reason to come along, as if a break in his duties always crops up at the right time. Does he know I don’t want to be alone down there? If he does, he never mentions
it. He makes this strange place easier to deal with, and I take comfort from the fact he is either untroubled or knows how to hide it.
At first, I was worried I might betray my unease to him, but over time this has lessened. Perhaps proximity and isolation makes me more comfortable around him. He is pleasant when he needs to be, and, more importantly, silent when he does not.
Death 42 – 498
Something has happened, and I am struggling to put it into a logical context.
Last night I woke in the small hours and was unable to get back to sleep. I dressed and began work. Maybe an hour later, Mason found me in the office and, without a word, set about his own tasks. We worked like this in comfortable silence for perhaps another two hours.
Around the time when Ras would normally be rising, I found a sample missing from the metallurgical file I was analysing, specifically a fresh scrape from the base of the central pillar. This had been the last part to be uncovered, shortly before the rest of the team left, and no one had thought to add it to the schedule. I signalled to Mason that I needed to visit the chamber and we put on our outer layers before taking the funicular lift down to the chamber, then down the ladders to the ‘floor’ of the toroid.
Mason found something to occupy him while I took fresh scrapings. The material here was brittle, flaking away in small jagged shards. I had taken off my heavy gloves to operate the tool and must have missed a stray patch of ice, because the next moment I found myself flat on my face.
I didn’t fall hard, seeing as the floor was sloping upwards away from me, but my instinct was to throw out a hand to stop myself and the flesh of my palm caught on a jagged edge. The metal dug deep into the meat of my hand, so deep that at first I didn’t feel anything. Then the painful sting registered, and I cried out. Reflex snatched my hand back, ripping more skin.
Mason came over to check I was all right. I was embarrassed, both from the fall and the fact that my eyes had started to water; I gave him a short answer and turned away. He insisted on checking my hand. The edge of the cut was ragged and bleeding. He fished a bandage from somewhere about his person and started to bind the wound. That was when the lights went off.
For a few seconds there was the deepest darkness I have ever known, an all-enveloping blackness like a cloud that wrapped itself around us. All there was in the world was the sound of our breathing and the warmth of his hands holding mine, the distant hum of pain all but forgotten. Then the air lightened, gradually, as if someone was turning it up in increments. The light was a hazy blue and it filled the chamber. I could see my own surprise in his face, and I must have blurted out something like, “Where is it coming from?” Nothing appeared to be generating the strange illumination, though a low humming was coming from somewhere.
As quickly as it had appeared the blue light flicked off, and after a few seconds of darkness the floodlights came back to life.
Something in the chamber had activated – I can think of no other way to describe it. Just for a moment, what had been dead and bare had come to life around us and I was rejuvenated. Boredom and frustration and the pain in my hand, gone in an instant as I realised we were not simply scratching away at some lifeless ruin, but on the cusp of discovering the workings of an ancient and complex apparatus. This would change everything.
I realised that he was still holding my hand and he was smiling at me. I asked him why, and he told me I looked alive.
Perhaps it was that, or simply because it was the best way to celebrate, but I took him to bed.
Hollow
When the three of them reached the small hollow, it was already dark under the trees. Derrin’s limp was so bad that when they came to a stop he simply dropped to the ground and lay there. Cale was spent. Already unfit, he’d withered in the cell. The flight from the hunters had almost finished him.
Only a few hours into the wide sweep of evergreen woods, they’d heard the pursuit – small bikes with old, coughing engines reverberating through the trees. The trail they’d left in the thick needle carpet would have been easy to spot and easier to follow; the wreckers had had the sense to sweep the bikes from side to side, spreading a net to catch a lame quarry. Then, as the pursuers had closed, another sound that stirred the primal fear in all of them – largs. Big ones, braying and straining as they closed in on their prey.
At one point Derrin had gone down, hitting his knee on some hidden stone, and his limp had slowed them. Syn’s harness wore livid welts into Cale’s shoulders. He’d barely kept his balance on the uneven terrain under the thick canopy that filtered the light a deep olive and made potholes and gullies invisible. Syn encouraged at first, until his own agony silenced him. Cale had kept Bowden’s face clear in his mind, knowing that to fall was to be ripped apart by the largs or put back in his cell; either way, his son would die alone.
Then, it had happened, quick as the slash of daylight through the trees. They’d struggled up a bank, every pore feeling the clear air ahead – perhaps a stream, some way to mask the trail. They hit the crest and an engine roar made them turn. A wrecker was at the base of the rise, close enough that they could see the holes in his ragged shirt. Cale had felt Derrin stumble beside him, a hand shooting out, a reflex that almost killed them all. Down they’d tumbled, spinning, sliding, loose earth and pebbles under them and the brush and saplings of the cliff whipping them as they fell. Cale had the wind knocked from him by something large, his ribs screaming.
The bottom of the gorge had been soaked from a recent flood – the only reason they survived. How they’d avoided being brained on any of the rocks and trees on the way down was a miracle. They lay there amid the long grasses and moss, buried under ripped earth and foliage, too exhausted and shocked to move, Syn unconscious. There were shouts from the top of the gorge, but no pursuit. The engines had roared off, doubtless heading upstream where the gorge was shallower.
Cale found a dead tree that had splintered in half on a rock, its spindly fingers dragging in the current. He and Derrin stripped the twigs from it even as they waded out into the stream that was deep and cold and fast. It carried them on, away from the hunters. Syn had woken up just in time to be hit in the mouth by a wave.
Then, floating. All of them quiet, listening to the birdcalls from the canopy as it closed back in overhead, the gorge walls receding. They dragged themselves from the river above a set of rapids and headed in the same rough direction as before. The trees behind them had been silent as they’d trudged on, soaked to the bone, each step a battle. The light under the canopy was gloomy, Ras edging the horizon, when Syn sighted the mossy hollow, sheltered by a rock intrusion and ringed by thick-trunked mirins.
* * *
Cale propped Syn with his back to the rock wall then gathered up some dead wood from the ground. With a lighter he’d taken from the wrecker camp he set fire to the kindling pyramid, and after some nursing the blaze crackled to life. He added some larger pieces, building it higher until the hollow was lit with a warm glow. The wood popped and whistled as the fire caught pockets of moisture, throwing shadows against the surrounding trees.
Derrin’s head lifted as he felt the warmth. Groaning, he dragged himself over. ‘Won’t they see the flames?’
‘Maybe,’ answered Cale. ‘But without it we’ll be dead by morning.’
Derrin shivered as he held his palms up to the blaze. ‘Maybe they’ll wait until tomorrow before they carry on searching.’
‘Maybe.’
Cale sank down against the rock next to Syn and felt some of the tension uncoil. His shoulders were raw from the straps and his ribs ached. They were out of danger, for now. The wreckers might just give up the chase – they were scavengers, not hunters. He had to hope that staying at large until dawn would make the pursuit more trouble than it was worth.
The three of them split the last of the waterlogged biscuits and nibbled them slowly, measuring each mouthful. At least they had water – Cale had refilled their canteen at the river. Welcome at the time, the icy meltwa
ter now chilled him to the core and he huddled closer to the fire. He felt Syn looking at him.
‘Goes without saying, buck,’ said the mercenary. He nodded slowly, holding Cale’s eye. ‘I mean it.’
Cale nodded. ‘Try to get some rest. I’m going on watch.’
Syn rested his head against the rock and fell instantly asleep.
Cale fed the fire with more logs, hoping to dry their damp clothes. He didn’t know if the mercenary would survive the night in his state, though he reminded himself that he’d lasted this far. Stoking the flames one more time, he saw that Derrin was also asleep.
He walked a little way off into the trees and found a small copse where three trunks grew close together. He sat down against the bole of one of them and settled in for the long watch.
The cold spread as the night deepened. Old habits came back to him from a lifetime ago. Don’t focus. Ignore how the leaves shift. Trust your ears first.
They were not far from Keln, he was more and more sure of it. When they’d escaped he’d made a snap decision about where to head and the gamble seemed to have paid off. The river, the downward slope of the land, all of it pointed towards them being past the spine of the Medels Peninsula. He’d seen their course while on the bridge of the Alec IV and knew the ship would round the spear-like headland before making for the harbour at Keln. Tomorrow they would press on in the same direction and the trees should thin out into meadow, then grain fields, then the city. It had been a long time, but something about the terrain felt familiar.
His time in Keln was hazy now. He’d not lived there long; it had been just after Aime had died. He and Bowden hadn’t spoken in months – the sting of their angry parting was still too raw. He’d left everything behind, save his tools, hoping for a simpler life. It wasn’t long before he realised that the port town, though far from the Home Peninsula, was not remote enough. Keln breathed trade; every day reminders of what he’d left behind – Karume, the Hegemony – flowed through the city. He’d walked the countryside and explored the forests, spending barely any time in his rented house. Perhaps that was why these trees felt familiar.
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