The Chara Talisman

by Alastair Mayer

  “Hey Hannibal,” Roberts called up the path. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “Yes, Jackie, what’s that?”

  “Why would anybody build a pyramid near the top of a mountain instead of down on the plains where it would be a lot easier to build? Not to mention easier to get to?” They were taking more frequent rests now.

  “Good question. It could be because they wanted it to be difficult to get to, so that only the most persistent would be worthy, and they had to prove their worthiness. And I think that it proves that they used advanced technology to build it. No dragging great stone blocks up here.”

  “Ah. I guess we’re proving ourselves worthy, then. I hope it appreciates the effort.”

  Marten chuckled. Carson ignored him. “There are other possibilities. When the pyramid was built, the plain below could have been a lake, or a shallow sea, or covered with ice.”

  “Ice?”

  “This planet has polar ice caps and we saw snow on the peaks at lower latitudes. It may have come out of an ice age not many thousand years ago. If so, that whole plain below, and a good chunk of this mountain, would have been under a few hundred to a couple of thousand feet of ice. Or water, if it were warmer. They probably put it up here because they could be sure of it staying dry and accessible. Kind of makes you wonder what’s hiding under the ice or on flooded continental shelf on other planets.”

  “That’s what neutrino tomography is for, to—”

  “The resolution isn’t fine enough,” Carson said, interrupting.

  “Okay,” Jackie continued, “but they could have built it closer to the equator, where the climate is more consistent.”

  “She’s got you there, Hannibal,” said Marten.

  “Not really, you’re more likely to find a civilization at these latitudes, where there’s some seasonal variation to encourage agriculture. Life is too easy, too constant at the equator.” It was hard to tell from Carson’s voice whether he was extemporizing or really meant it.

  “Uh huh. Still damn silly if you ask me,” said Roberts.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh, right.”

  The ascent continued.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  They were nearing the peak now. As they trekked up the rocky slope, they would catch occasional glimpses of the structure ahead of them as it came into view above the rocks. Their breath was coming shorter—they’d been climbing steadily, and the air was thinner at this altitude. There was also the anticipation.

  Finally they reached the last ridge, and the rough ground they’d been walking on gave way to a level area—still with a few rocks, gravel and a few small, hardy, alpine plants. Before them rose a high-peaked, four-sided pyramid. Beyond that the mountain rose futher. This level area looked like it had been deliberately leveled, carved out of the side of the mountain just below the peak. But it was the—what, building? temple? tomb?—that caught their attention.

  It was constructed of a pinkish rock or what looked like rock. It wasn’t granite, or sandstone, or marble, or anything any of the three could readily identify. For the most part the sides were flat, once polished to a high shine but now—after who knew how many thousands of years—starting to show a little wear. The sides were also decorated with relief carvings, geometric shapes—rectangles, squares, and circles—in different groupings and patterns. One large rectangle might have outlined a doorway, but there were no obvious gaps or cracks to prove that it was.

  “The stonework is excellent!” said Carson.

  Marten examined the surface closely, running his fingers over the surface. “Is this stone?” He tried scratching the surface, first with his claws, then with his knife, although from the absence of weathering, he was sure it would be pointless. It was. So was his knife, now. “Very hard stuff. Not natural stone, anyway.”

  Carson grunted an acknowledgment. He was examining the carvings around the presumed doorway. “If this is a library, they surely meant for there to be some way to get inside, but nothing too obvious. The clue will be in these carvings.”

  “Or it could just be solid, like the pyramids,” Jackie pointed out.

  “Which pyramids?” There was a note of irritation in Carson’s voice. “In any case, whether you’re speaking of Egyptian or MesoAmerican pyramids, I’ll remind you that both sorts are actually complex structures that possess inner chambers, passages, and the like.”

  “Yes, Professor. Just wondering out loud.”

  Carson caught himself. “Oh, sorry.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  They began examining the carvings around the base of the pyramid. Some of it seemed to be related to astronomy. There were star diagrams, representations of this planet’s two moons, and a stylized Chara-centric diagram of the Chara planetary system. Might this be the key? A problem to solve? Carson pushed at a few of the carved planets at random, as though they were push buttons. Nothing.

  Jackie watched this idly. There was what might be the rectangular outline of a door, with simple geometric figures carved nearby. Something looked familiar about one particular shape. “Carson, never mind the buttons,” she called out.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think there’s an easier way in. Where’s the talisman?”

  Marten spoke up. “I have it.”

  “Okay, try it in that recess,” said Jackie, pointing.

  Carson and Marten looked at the recess, and they recognized the rounded square shape of the talisman. Marten pulled it out of his pocket and examined it. “Let us hope that the dating sample we took didn’t damage it.” So saying, he fit it into the recess.

  The niche wasn’t deep enough to hold the talisman, just a shallow recess to show where it could be placed. Marten held it there. Nothing happened.

  “It doesn't seem to—” Carson began, but Marten, still holding the talisman in place, raised his other hand to silence him.

  “I think I hear something. Wait.” A dim light illuminated on the door. After a few moments, the crack marking the edge of the door deepened, and then the door itself swung up.

  Chapter 24: Within the Pyramid

  The Pyramid

  As the door lifted, Marten snatched the talisman back, and the door finished opening to reveal a tunnel leading into the interior of the pyramid. This was it. Marten slipped the talisman back into his pocket.

  “Well, shall we proceed?” said Carson.

  “After you, you’re the senior investigator.”

  “So I am. Thank you.” Carson pulled a hand light from his pack and walked forward a few paces into the tunnel. He stopped to look around, at the walls, the ceiling, and the tunnel leading onward. He took out his omni, touched a control and waved it around. It was silent. “No radiation, nothing toxic that the omni registers.” He took a few breaths, sniffing. There was a faint stale smell to the air. “It looks solid, and I don’t smell any obvious gases or fumes in here. Let’s go.”

  The others followed. The tunnel zigzagged at slight angles, but couldn’t have been more than fifty or so feet in total length. At the end it opened into a larger room, although it was still small compared to the overall size of the pyramid. Arrayed around it were several large stone—or whatever it was—blocks, like tables or altars, or perhaps even sarcophagi. One table supported a cylindrical metal device, about four feet long and less than a foot in diameter. A metal rod or tubing wrapped around it in helical fashion for perhaps a third of its length, and near its other end were projections, possibly handles, with what were probably controls. It suggested the product of advanced, and non-human, technology.

  “Lads and ladies,” said Carson in a hushed, awed tone, “I think we’ve found what we came for.”

  “So, what exactly is a Cosmic Maguffin?” asked Jackie. While it looked like a kind of tool or perhaps weapon to her, she figured this was the archeologists’ area of expertise.

  “Haven’t a clue, to tell you the truth,” said Carson. “I wasn’t even certain there’d be one. Given
where we found it and they way those handle-looking projections fit, it could be anything from some kind of artwork, to a death ray, to a healing ray, to—and this would be the classical archeological presumption—some kind of religious icon or fertility idol.”

  “Fertility idol? With two, ah, penis-like projections?”

  “I’ve seen stranger. Although truth to tell I think a lot of what the old terrestrial archeologists labeled fertility symbols were really just that culture’s equivalent to pornography.” Carson looked as though he was about to say more, then thought better of it. “Anyway, I think on that particular gizmo they’re just handles, and it’s a tool of some kind. Please, try to avoid turning it on until we figure out what.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it, Doctor Carson,” a voice called from the gallery entrance.

  Carson and the others whirled to look. He thought he had recognized the voice, and his fear was confirmed when he saw the man’s face, and the armed men flanking him.

  “Hopkins!”

  “Ah, so you know my name now. That saves introductions. And you’ve met Rico already.” Hopkins nodded toward one of the other men, one holding a familiar-looking assault rifle. There was another man, similarly armed. And no doubt more outside the pyramid.

  “This is becoming too much of a fucking habit,” spat Carson disgustedly. “Damn it, this really does belong in a museum!”

  “Come now, Carson. I know as well as you do that this particular artifact will never end up in a museum even if I did let you take it.”

  “What? That’s absurd.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Carson, you’re nowhere near as good at it as I am. Does the name ‘Ducayne’ ring a bell?”

  “No, but ‘Quasimodo’ might.” Carson was too annoyed to care that pissing off the guys with the guns might not be a good idea.

  “Enough! Now, lie down on the floor, slowly, and put your hands behind your heads.” Hopkins ordered. “Men, watch them carefully, especially the timoan; they’re fast.”

  Grudgingly the trio did so, any thoughts of fighting it out dashed by both the tactical position—there were men with guns between them and the door—and the fact that Hopkins called three more men in from outside.

  Their sidearms were removed from their holsters, and they were given a perfunctory pat-down before being tied up and dragged out of the way, over against a wall of the chamber.

  Hopkins pulled out a camera and took a few quick photos of the room and the gadget on its pedestal. He put the camera away. “All right, men, pick up that device—carefully!--and anything else interesting, and let’s go.”

  There wasn’t much else interesting. They gathered a handful of smaller artifacts which could have been anything from hand tools to replacement batteries for the larger device, but that was all. The men started to leave, with Hopkins trailing. Carson and the others were still trussed and in a heap against the wall.

  “Hey, Hopkins!” Carson called. “What about us?”

  “Sorry, Dr. Carson, this time I don’t need a write up to increase this baby’s value. I’d just as soon you stayed here.”

  “Damn it, man, you can’t just leave us here!”

  “Why, certainly I can. Goodbye Dr. Carson, gentles.” With that Hopkins turned to leave, then paused and turned back. “Oh, and by the way—although you don’t look like you’ll be getting free any time soon, if you do happen to, you might want to stay clear of the door.” And with that, he left.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “What the heck did that mean, ‘stay clear of the door’?” asked Jackie. Now that there was no longer someone pointing a gun at her, she was trying to wriggle her bonds loose.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he has Rico outside with a rifle, but I’ve got a bad feeling about it.” said Carson. “Come on, maybe we can work each other’s ties.” Carson wriggled around to try to get back to back with Jackie or Marten.

  “If you can get your hands near mine,” said Marten, “I think I might be able to slash the cords with my claws. I just can’t reach my own.”

  “All right, let’s try that.” Squirm, wriggle. “That’s it, up a bit.” Twist, bend. “There.”

  “Okay, Hannibal, hold still, I don’t want to scratch your wrists too.”

  “Right.”

  Then with no warning at all, there was a sharp, incredibly loud BANG! and they felt the concussion through the pyramid. If it echoed at all in the enclosed space, they couldn’t hear it, their ears ringing so much from the initial explosion. The ringing faded but the noise didn’t. A crashing, rumbling roar followed. A cloud of dust drifted in from the tunnel. Hopkins had blown up the tunnel entrance, sealing it. They were trapped.

  His ears still ringing from the blast, Carson thought he heard Roberts say something like “Oh, so that’s what he meant.”

  Chapter 25: Trapped

  Within the Pyramid

  The rumbling echoes of the rockslide died out, and the three looked around, seeing nothing in the pitch blackness.

  “Great, now what?”

  “Hang on.” Jackie’s voice. The sound came of clothing rustling, then a bright light.

  “Ow, hey, warn a guy before doing that, will you?” Marten said.

  Carson and Marten both shielded their eyes, blinking in the sudden brightness.

  “Sorry, I’ll turn it down.” Jackie did so. “I’m just not a big fan of dark spaces.”

  “What, like outer space?” said Marten, who had no problem with dark spaces.

  “Dark, enclosed spaces.”

  “Well, so now we can see our tomb.” The disgust in Carson’s voice was clear.

  The zigzag of the entrance tunnel had kept most of the rocks and rubble, which blocked the entrance, in the outer part of it. A few had bounced in as far as the room they were in, and it was obvious from the lack of light that the entrance was blocked.

  “No good. Any other way out?” Jackie asked.

  “You looked around in here as much as we did, did you see anything that looked like another way out?”

  “No, but—well, you guys are archeologists. Don’t old tombs and pyramids sometimes have hidden passages?”

  “Some of them do, yes, but this isn’t a tomb. Well, not originally anyway. The entrance was difficult enough to open, why would they deliberately conceal another?” said Marten.

  “Hang on,” said Carson. “You may have a point there, Jackie.” He paused for a moments, sorting out his thoughts. “Marten, this library—archive, whatever—is empty, correct?”

  “Eh? Of course. There's nothing in here, there was just the cylinder.”

  “But the entrance was closed, and there was a puzzle to get in here.”

  “Yes, but what’s your point?” asked Marten.

  “So how come it’s empty? Would someone who’d cleaned the place out bother sealing the entrance again? What if this is just another part of the puzzle, a false library?”

  “Hmm. Something like the false chambers in some of the Egyptian pyramids?”

  “Along those lines, yes.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jackie hadn’t quite been following the archeologists’ conversation, but now she thought she understood. “You think there really is a hidden passage, another exit?”

  “There’s no guarantee. Even if we do find another passage, it might just lead to a library chamber, not an exit. But we won’t know if we don’t try. Look for anything that might be an activation mechanism, look for cracks in the wall that might not be just joints. Heck, tap the walls for different sounds—it’s not uncommon for doorways to be plastered over to really conceal them.”

  There followed an intensive examination of the walls, floor, and every ledge and glyph sculpted into the walls.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Carson finally stopped, and swore in disgust. “This is futile. If there were a secret door we’d have found it by now. And why would there be. This is no library, just a store room for that . . . that damned Maguffin!”

  The others stopped their searc
hing and looked at him. “But that doesn’t make sense,” said Marten. “Why go to the trouble of building this, the elaborate puzzle carvings on the outside, when that’s all that was in here? Where’s the easy stuff to help a developing civilization get started?”

  “Uh, guys?” Jackie said, but Carson was already talking.

  “Maybe that gizmo was an education ray or something. It could implant knowledge directly into the brain,” he said.

  “Of an alien brain?” asked Marten.

  “Guys . . .” Jackie tried again.

  “What?” Carson and Marten both turned to her and asked, simultaneously.

  “Um, you didn’t solve the puzzle to get in here, remember? We used the talisman. Could that be significant?”

  “Significant? Roberts you’re a genius!” Carson scrambled to his feet and hurried over to the rubble-choked entrance.

  “Carson? Now what?” asked Marten.

  “We used the pass key. Now just maybe that opened a different door, one to, oh, a janitor’s closet, perhaps,” said Carson, explaining over his shoulder as he began to examine what he could of the entrance passage.

  “Some janitor. But even so . . .”

  Marten had caught on, and filled in the explanation. “Then maybe there’s a door from the passage into the proper first gallery. Maybe we can get to it.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” Jackie said, but she was already in the passage way and beginning to move rocks away from the wall so they could search it for doorways. “Tell me you still have the talisman.”

  A shocked, sudden silence as Carson and Marten looked at her, then at each other. Marten started frantically slapping at his clothes to check his pockets, then he dug into one.

  With a triumphant smile, he pulled out the talisman and held it up to show it. “They were just looking for weapons when they patted us down, so they missed it.”

  “I think they were too interested in patting me down,” said Jackie. She shivered briefly at the memory. “Remind me to take a shower at the first opportunity.”