The Chara Talisman

by Alastair Mayer

  “That would be strange,” Carson said, deadpan.

  “But charming,” Marten added.

  Jackie gave them a dirty look and wondered if Marten was really ignorant of Feynman diagrams.

  They had also noticed that the foundations of the structure had cracked. There were several places where cracks showed in the walls. There were also places—presumably on the outer walls of the structure—where the not-quite-stone material of the structure gave way to the actual rock of the mountain. In all likelihood, the builders had dug a deep foundation and at the lower levels, just filled in cracks in the rock with their equivalent of concrete, leaving areas where the native rock was smooth and defect free to serve as the wall itself. Except that after these thousands of years, the rock was no longer defect free. But the ramp kept going, and the pass still worked, and they needed to find a way out somehow. They continued downward.

  Chapter 27: Descent

  Below the Pyramid

  The descending ramp followed the usual pattern, except as they rounded the curve, this dead-ended, with a single doorway. Other than minor cracks in the wall—they’d been seeing those for the last couple of levels—the corridor just ended, with no sign of a concealed door or engravings for a puzzle to solve. There was just the usual gallery off to the side.

  “Well,” said Jackie, “Ground floor. Hardware, appliances, and small furry animals.”

  Marten shot her a look.

  “Everybody out,” she finished.

  They fanned out to survey the gallery, occasionally remarking to each other at a particularly interesting carving on the wall or some small object on a shelf or dais.

  “Hey Carson,” Jackie called over to him, “there’s been a passage on to the next level beside every gallery so far. If this is the bottom level, what do you suppose they used to get to the next level from here?”

  “There is no next level, this is it.”

  “That’s exactly my point. So where’s the transporter? We’ll just beam out of here.”

  Carson looked over at Roberts, saw the silly grin, and just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  “With our luck it probably wouldn’t work anyway,” she continued. “Speaking of work, do you suppose the device Hopkins made off with, whatever it is, still works?”

  “The doors and lights do, and it might pick up power from the environment, even if the creators didn’t have batteries with a ten thousand year shelf life—which we know they did.”

  “Point taken.”

  “So how do we get out of here?” asked Marten.

  “That’s a valid question. Okay, we need to do a thorough search of this level. Look for any hidden doorways. If that doesn’t work I guess we go back up and see if we missed something at the main entrance level. Maybe the talisman is still good for something.”

  “What about the chemistry gallery?” Roberts asked. “Maybe I can rig up something explosive from that element collection.”

  “I think we’ll keep that as our last resort, Jackie.”

  “Spoil sport.”

  They fanned out around the room, each checking a separate wall in detail. The cracking in the walls they’d seen earlier was more prevalent here, some of the cracks quite wide, but with solid rock behind. Jackie had about given up when she heard Carson’s shout. “Over here, I think I’ve got something!”

  The other two came running. “What have you found? Another door?” But Carson wasn’t examining the wall engraving. He was on hands and knees examining one of the cracks in the wall, first peering into it, then listening at it.

  “Come down here. See this gap in the crack? Put your hand there, what do you feel?” said Carson.

  Jackie knelt down and waved her hand in front of the crack. Was that a draft? She put her face down next to it. She definitely could feel a current of air blowing across her cheek, coming out through the narrow channel. She thought she could hear a faint, distant roaring, too. “What is that?”

  “I think there’s a cave, this crack connects to a cave system,” said Carson. “These mountains must be riddled with them. It’s the right kind of rock.”

  “So we could get out through a cave? But, we can’t get through this crack, not unless we can find a shrink ray of some kind.”

  “Yeah, good point. Still, there’s hope now.”

  “Let’s check further, maybe there are more cracks, perhaps we can loosen a couple of rocks.”

  Marten had been examining the wall around the crack, then scanned the adjacent floor and ceiling. “I do not think so, this material is very strong,” he said, replying to the last comment. “But I also do not think we’ll have to.” He pointed at an area of the floor a few feet from where they were gathered. “Look.”

  In the floor was a recess, in the shape of a supercircle.

  Chapter 28: The Gizmo

  In the Mountains

  “Boss? Aren’t we going to test the gizmo?” Rico had been itching to see what it did ever since he had first laid eyes on it, and here they were almost halfway back to the ship. Hopkins had set an aggressive pace, but they were slowing down.

  “Test it? We don’t even know what it’s supposed to do, how would we test it?” Hopkins asked.

  “Well, the handles are obvious. It’s got controls, knobs and sliders, and a pretty obvious pushbutton on the handle, that’s got to be a trigger.”

  “So you think it’s a weapon?”

  “Well, what else would it be?” Rico thought in terms of weapons a lot. “Anyway, how about we just point it at a tree or something and press the trigger?”

  “Are you volunteering?”

  “Ah,” Rico thought about it for a moment. He had wanted to try firing the thing, but on the other hand they really didn’t know what it would do. Even firing a hand-held missile could be dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing. He wasn’t that stupid. “No. How about we rig up some kind of mechanical actuator and do it remotely?”

  “We shouldn’t tamper with it,” Hopkins said. “Look, I’m curious myself as to what this device is for, but if we damage it our customer would not be at all happy at that.” Rico thought Hopkins was going to let it go at that, but Hopkins continued: “And in this case an unhappy customer could be hazardous to all our health.”

  That last puzzled Rico, and he wondered just who this customer was. But he still wanted to know what the gizmo did. “Who said anything about tampering? I don’t wanna take it apart, just push some buttons. Anway, maybe after all this time the power supply’s dead.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Besides,” said Rico, going for his last, best argument. He really wanted to see what this could do, and there would never be a better chance. He wouldn’t see it after they turned it over to Hopkins’ “customer”. “What if it’s the wrong gizmo?”

  “What?”

  “Well, what if there are secret tunnels in the pyramid and Carson found them? What if this thing is a decoy? Are you going to tell your boss you didn’t even test this?”

  “All right, but not here. When we get back to the ship we’ll do it properly.” Hopkins looked up at the gathering clouds. “Let’s hustle, it looks like rain.”

  “Okay.” Rico turned to the others. “Let’s step up the pace,” he called, and started toward the back of the group to encourage the stragglers. As he went, he pondered Hopkins’s lack of reaction when he used the phrase “your boss”. That was an interesting development.

  Chapter 29: Down and Out

  Below the Pyramid

  This time the passkey opened a trapdoor in the floor, which slid aside to reveal a rough-hewn passage. A few meters further in the passage widened to a large cave tunnel. Rock sloped down away from the door to form a ramp down into the cave. A cool damp breeze blew up from it, and they heard a distant roaring noise.

  “They must have discovered this cave here when they excavated to this level,” said Carson. “I wonder why they didn’t just seal it off altogether.”

  “Who knows
,” said Marten. “Maybe to monitor the cave, to make sure it wasn’t creating a structural hazard.”

  “Judging by the cracks, they got that wrong.”

  “Well, ten thousand years can make a difference. But maybe they had another reason.”

  “Well, we won’t find out sitting here, so we might as well get going.”

  “Going where?” asked Jackie.

  “Down into the cave, of course.”

  “You guys go ahead. I’ll go swing by the chemistry room and blow the main door open. Meet you back at the ship.”

  “Come on Jackie, this has to lead out. There’s a breeze. That means it opens up somewhere. And it sounds like water—remember the springs we passed on the hike up? This mountain must be honeycombed.”

  “We can’t get out through a spring.”

  “There’ll be other openings. Come on, we need to at least give it a try.” With that, Carson slid his feet into the opening and eased himself down the rocky slope. Marten followed, and Jackie, hesitating, brought up the rear. The trapdoor opening faded to a small dim rectangle behind them.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Jackie hesitated inside the cave entrance. She had become used to the dim tunnels of the Archive, but it was dark in here, utterly black. And noisy. A continuous loud roaring filled the cavern, much louder than the faint background noise they had heard in the artificial passageways of the Archive. Jackie couldn’t bring herself to go on, and crouched, paralyzed, just inside the broken wall leading back into the Archive. Marten had already walked on ahead, unheeding.

  Carson turned back to her, shouting to be heard over the roar. “Come on Jackie! Let’s go!” Jackie didn’t move. Carson yelled down the tunnel. “MARTEN, HOLD UP! WAIT!” Jackie could barely hear him over the roaring noise, but Marten stopped and turned. He came jogging back up the narrow rock trail.

  They gathered around her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s the dark, and the noise. What is that, anyway?” Jackie couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. She breathed heavily, almost panting, and her skin felt cold and clammy. She recognized it as a cold sweat rather than just the humidity of the cave.

  Carson was staring intently at her face, his light shining on her. “Good gosh, you’re as white as a sheet. I didn’t know you had freckles.”

  “Wha, what?” said Jackie, confused by the apparent non- sequitor.

  “Your face. It’s so white I can see your freckles, they don’t normally show up.”

  A part of Jackie’s mind realized that Carson was trying to distract her, talking about something entirely different and mundane to reduce her near panic. When she realized that she was near panic, she felt a mixture of shame and anger at herself. Loud noises didn’t bother her. Darkness didn’t bother her. Why was she paralyzed like this? And what was that noise anyway?

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Jackie was starting to calm down now, the anger at herself replacing the panic, “what is that noise?”

  Marten answered. “There’s a waterfall, up ahead in the passage.”

  A waterfall? At this point Jackie finally noticed the small stream flowing along one side of the tunnel floor. “Must be huge to make all that noise!”

  “About five feet. Sounds are magnified in here, and carry further. It’s like being in a speaking tube.”

  Jackie had never heard of a speaking tube, but she could guess from context. As she adapted to the noise and dark she began to relax. Knowing what it was helped. “Okay, I’m . . . I think I’m okay now,” she said to the others. She breathed more slowly now, her heart didn’t pound so much. “Just give me a moment to get used to the noise and get my bearings.”

  Carson nodded. “Sure, take your time.” Turning to Marten, he asked: “This waterfall, can we get by it?”

  “Oh, easily. The stream is not deep and there are rocks we can step on. The cave roof drops enough that we can use it for hand holds. The path kind of crosses the stream there. The tunnel curves so I couldn’t see any further than that.”

  “Good enough. Jackie, how are you doing?”

  Jackie took a deep breath, the air cool and damp. The roar of the waterfall was just background noise now, still loud but something she could ignore, like that of jet engines or rocket thrusters around port. Her eyes had adapted to what little light they had, it was no longer just pure black noise. “Okay, I’m fine now.” She straightened up. “Sorry about that. Let’s go.”

  They sensed her embarrassment at her near panic attack, and saw no reason to discuss it further.

  “Okay, let’s get across the falls and see what’s around the corner,” said Carson. “Marten, you take the lead, then Jackie, I’ll take up the rear. Stay close.” And they led off down the tunnel.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The cave turned out to be fairly easy to follow, without a lot of twisty side passages. Mostly they could just follow the stream, and what side passages they saw were smaller, with a regularity, a sameness, perhaps due to the homogeneity of the rock and the process by which the cave had formed.

  The main passage, except for occasional areas where it broadened, was taller than it was wide, with the bottom narrowing in a way that sometimes made walking difficult. At times the passage narrowed to where they couldn’t proceed except by walking in the trickling stream on the tunnel floor. Despite this, Carson felt they were making good progress.

  Up ahead the tunnel turned sharply to the right. The tunnel itself opened up and widened at the bend, with curving walls and a higher ceiling. Carson considered this and wondered what the turbulence in this elbow bend would be like in a flash flood. He tried to remember what the weather had been like, if a storm or rain had been imminent. No, the skies had been clear.

  “Carson, you know some geology.” Jackie’s voice broke his train of thought. “Why are there no stalactites in this cave?”

  Carson had been too focused on just getting out to have noticed, but now that Jackie mentioned it, there was indeed a distinct absence of stalactites, or flowstone, or any similar features usually found in caves. “Perhaps it’s just a young cave, they haven’t had time to form.”

  “It was here before that ten- or twenty-thousand-year-old pyramid above it. What do you mean ‘young’?”

  “Caves are often much older than that, but you have a point.”

  “Unless they came back later, after the cave formed and put in the trapdoor,” Marten said. “Although I don’t think that is likely.”

  “No,” said Carson. “Given this stream, it probably means that this passage frequently fills with water. Stalactites won’t grow in tunnels that are underwater or often flooded.” He regretted the words as soon as he’d uttered them.

  “What do you mean, ‘frequently’?” Jackie asked. Carson heard concern in her voice.

  He had been hoping not to worry the others about that. “Torrential rains, spring thaws, I don’t know. We should be fine, the weather outside was clear.”

  “You’re not a pilot,” Jackie said. “There was a system building up offshore to the north-west when we landed. That was almost two thousand klicks away so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. I don’t know the weather systems on this planet, but on similar planets that could build into a storm system inland.”

  “If it did, when would it get here?”

  “Too many variables. It’s been a couple of days already. Depends on the jet stream, mountain ranges, whether there are high or low pressure areas building to the east. Worst case it’s already raining outside.”

  “I didn’t need to hear that,” Marten said.

  “The stream doesn’t seem to be flowing any more than when we started, but that’s all the more reason to step up the pace.” So saying, Carson quickened his stride down the passage, and Jackie and Marten hustled to keep up.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  About an hour later, after a particularly difficult stretch of clambering over a series of irregular boulders, they reached an area where the cave widened and h
ad a broad stretch of dry floor, with the stream off to one side.

  “Hold up, rest break!” Carson called back, and heard his voice echo strangely in the cavern.

  The others made appreciative noises, settling down on the flat, gently sloping rock floor. After resting for a few minutes, Jackie stood up, pulled out a knife, and turned to the wall of the cave. She began scratching at the rock.

  “Carving your initials?” Carson asked. Then he noticed that Jackie had scratched out an “A”, not a “J”.

  “Sort of.” said Jackie, continuing to carve. She finished and stepped aside so the others could see her handiwork.

  “AS? What is AS?” asked Marten.

  Jackie just grinned. She looked over at Carson. “Do you know?” she asked him.

  Carson gave her a blank look. “Why would I know?”

  “How about ‘Arne Saknussemm’?” hinted Jackie.

  Saknussemm, Saknussemm. The name sounded damn familiar, but Carson couldn’t quite—then he had it. “Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth. You’re sick, Roberts.”

  Jackie just grinned.

  “But shouldn’t you have done it in runes?”

  Jackie’s grin dropped. “Dang it, you’re right.”

  Marten looked from one to the other. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Character in a well known book,” Carson said. “Ask me to explain later.”

  Jackie smiled wryly, as at some inner joke. “I’m surprised you’re not going to add something like ‘TS + BT’, Hannibal.”

  Carson looked back at her, puzzled. “What? Who are TS and BT, and why would I want to do that?”

  “Well, given your name and all, I thought you’d make the connection.”