by Ian Douglas
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It’s true! Three dolphins.”
“So…are you a member?”
He grinned. “Well…I don’t have the Three Dolphin pin…”
“I knew it! And how many were in the room?”
“Just two of us, I’m afraid. But we managed okay.”
“How conventional! So, was it true what they say about zero-G sex?”
“Gee, Teri, I don’t know. What do they say?”
“Oh, that it’s a really shib experience. Better than anything on Earth.” She giggled. “That you can both be on top at once.”
Dr. David Alexander pulled her a bit closer with his left hand, while roving about slowly beneath her opened blouse with his right. “It’s really just like here,” he told her, giving her breast a playful squeeze. “It depends on who you do it with.”
“Mmm. I would like to try it, sometime.”
“It’s kind of messy. All the sweat and, ah, other fluids tend to form little droplets that just float around in the air. It can be interesting trying to chase them all down with a rag, afterward. And even on a Mars cycler, it can be damned hard finding any privacy!” He kissed her, then shifted a bit, trying to get more comfortable on his half-seated perch against the corner of his desk. “All things considered, it’s usually a lot more convenient to do it in a plain, ordinary, Earth-bound bed, with a nice steady pull of one G to keep things in place.”
“Like, maybe, a gel-bed? They say that’s the closest thing there is to zero G on Earth. If you don’t count giant swimming pools.”
“That would work. Like a waterbed without the sloshing.”
“At my place? Tonight?”
He kissed her again. “That sounds just about perfect. Dinner first?”
“Sure. You have to tell your wife you’re working late?”
He winced inwardly at the mention of Liana. Things had not been good between them for a long, long time, not since the very early days of their marriage, in fact. Liana’s stubborn refusal to consider a divorce hadn’t really bothered him before. He’d always managed to keep his affairs discreet. But now, with Teri, he found himself wishing there was something he could do to overthrow Liana’s religious convictions and make her see that their relationship wasn’t salvageable. The thought of being able to come home at night to a woman who shared his passions, who wasn’t enmired in senseless garbage like Liana’s cosmic astronuts, a woman who was intelligent and competent and endlessly fascinating…
He shook his head, dispelling the fantasy. “Actually, she’s out of town. In Pennsylvania, visiting her sister.”
“Great. Then you could spend the night.”
David’s workscreen chirped. Without letting Teri go, he reached behind his back and touched a key on his desk, opening the channel without turning on the visual. “Yes, Larry.”
“Sir, there are two people here to see you from the Department of Science? They say they need to talk to you.”
He pulled back from Teri’s moist lips long enough to say, “Do they have an appointment? I’m busy right now.”
“Uh, nossir. No appointment. But they said their business with you is, uh, Clearance Blue.”
Damn. “Wait a minute.” He looked down at Teri. “Sorry….”
For answer, she slid her hand down to his crotch and gave him a final, breath-catching squeeze. “Business first,” she said, licking her lips, then giving him a last, quick kiss. “I’ve got work to do, too. I can wait till to-night.”
She stepped away from him and busied herself with rebuttoning her blouse and tucking it in. David stood, straightened his clothing, then walked over to the large, corner-office window overlooking Lake Shore Drive and the Burnham Harbor Marina.
The crowd at Soldier’s Field, he saw, was still there, larger and more agitated than ever. Many of the protesters held signs. DON’T COVER UP OUR GOD, read one. THE BUILDERS MADE US IN THEIR IMAGE, said another, along-side a photograph of the Cydonian Face. A few had glued flatscreens to their signboards, to display animated clips or video—most of the Face or of some of the released images from the Cave of Wonders. Someone was haranguing the crowd with a microphone and amplifiers from a makeshift tower on Waldon Drive, but the soundproofing in the new IES building was too efficient for him to hear what was being said. Not that it mattered. Scuzzy-headed nonsense, all of it.
Well, not entirely scuzzy-headed. He could understand where the public—long prepared by wild stories of ETs and UFOs, of alien abductions and ancient astronauts—might have picked up misinformation enough to go off on these tangents. But the freestyle mingling of science fact, speculation, and outright fantasy had disturbed him since his earliest days as an archeology undergraduate.
It didn’t help at all that some, at least, of the long-running stories about extraterrestrials visiting primitive human cultures in the remote past were turning out to be true, at least in some aspects. Someone had transported early humans to Mars half a million years ago…and might even have been responsible for some genetic tampering at the time as well. There were still some nasty unanswered questions about the evolutionary transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, and after a long, rearguard battle even longtime conservatives in anthropological and paleontological circles were now seriously considering ET intervention as a distinct, even a likely, possibility. The timing of the artifacts on Mars and of the poorly understood transition of Homo erectus to archaic Homo sapiens were too close to believably be coincidence.
David Alexander was now the closest thing there was to an expert on the whole question. The fifteen months he’d spent on Mars had made him a celebrity of sorts, as well as the authority on extraterrestrial intelligence within the solar system.
One of the protesters on the street below, a young woman wearing briefs and nothing else in the steamy Chicago-summer heat, was jumping up and down with a large sign held above her head. YOU CAN TELL US, DR. A! it read.
He snorted, turning away from the window. Being a celebrity wasn’t so bad—it certainly had enlivened his sex life since his return to Earth two months ago. If only celebrity status didn’t attract so many kooks.
And unpleasant responsibilities. Teri, her clothing ordered once again, flashed a smile and a wink filled with promise, and strolled out the door.
“Okay, Larry. Have them come in.”
His visitors were Sarah Mackler and Roger Flores, both in conservative orange-and-green business smartsuits, with scancards identifying them as agents of the US Department of Science. “Dr. Alexander!” the woman said. Her costume was accented by a brightly colored Ashanti head-band. “How are we doing today?”
“I have no idea how the corporate we is doing, Ms. Mackler,” he said. “I am doing well, although I have a feeling you’re about to change all of that. Again.”
Sarah smiled pleasantly, a flash of bright teeth against dark chocolate skin, as though she was determined to ignore his moodiness. “Good to hear it, Doctor. We have an assignment for you.”
“An urgent assignment,” her companion added.
David slumped into his chair. “Look. I appreciate the attention. And I certainly appreciate the position you people seem to have carved out for me here. But when are you going to get it through your bureaucratic heads that I am a scientist? A field man, not a damned desk pilot!”
“The desk work getting you down?” Sarah asked, taking a chair for herself.
“No. I’ll tell you what’s getting me down.” He gestured at his desk’s flatscreen. “In the past three weeks, I’ve been requested by either your department or the administration to speak at no fewer than seven dinners, luncheons, or other functions, from Great LA to Washington, DC! I’ve been in the air or in one hotel or other more than I’ve been here! Damn it, the work I’m doing is important. And I can’t do it when you people are sub-Oing me back and forth across the continent all the time!”
“Now, Dr. Alexander—” Roger Flores began.
“No! You listen to
me, for a change! Ever since I got back from Mars, you people have had me on the go. Public-relations appearances. Consciousness-raising talks. Press conferences. Net recordings. Even fund-raisers! I’m sick of shaking hands and making nice to people who don’t understand what this is all about anyway! I’m sick of overpriced chicken dinners! I’m sick of not being able to go home to my wife!” That wasn’t particularly true, but it never hurt to throw a little extra guilt in a discussion like this one. “And I’m especially sick of being pulled away from my work to serve as some kind of glad-handing front man for the Department of Science, when I ought to be here studying the data we brought back from Cydonia!”
“I might point out,” Flores said stiffly, “that you were the one to upload such, um, controversial findings to the Earthnet, while you were on Mars.”
“I did what I thought was right!”
“Of course! No one’s blaming you. You rightly judged that releasing that information would pull the UN’s fangs, when they wanted to cover up your finds…but you also caused quite a few troubles for your own government.” He gestured toward the corner window. “Have you seen your fan club out there? They have the traffic tied up all the way from McCormack Place to the Field Museum!”
“Worse than a big game at Soldier Field,” Sarah added.
He sighed. “I’ve seen it. And I don’t care how many dinners I attend, how many college speeches I make, how many reporters I talk to, it’s not going to change the minds of people who have their minds made up already! What these pop-culture, garbage-science hooligans believe or don’t believe is not my responsibility.”
“Isn’t it, Doctor?” Sarah asked him. “You know, when you accepted this post, it was with the understanding that you would work closely with the department. With us. Between the war and your, um, sudden release of, shall we say, sensitive information, our society is rather delicately balanced right now. The peace movement is growing, getting more powerful, and it’s feeding off this ancient-astronaut craze. A craze you triggered by telling the world about those human bodies you found on Mars!”
“Well, I’m sorry people are such idiots! But I happen to be a firm believer in the essential freedom of science. You can’t smother newfound facts just because they’re inconvenient!”
“Nonsense,” Roger snapped. “All of history is one big session of spin control and public-relations management after another!”
“That’s an unpleasantly cynical outlook.”
“And yours is unpleasantly naive!”
“Gentlemen, please!” Sarah said. “Doctor, we appreciate your sentiment in the matter. By and large, I agree with you, and, more to the point, so does the president. We do still live in a democracy, for what that’s worth, and total censorship is incompatible with democratic principles. I’m sure you can accept, though, that where there is a danger to the country or to national security, the government has the right, has the responsibility to exercise judgment.” When David didn’t immediately reply, she shrugged and went on. “In any case, Doctor, I’m afraid you jumped the gun on us. As it happens, we don’t want to send you out to another college speech.”
“Eh? Why didn’t you say so!”
“You didn’t give us the chance!” Roger replied.
Sarah gave her comrade a sharp look, then smiled at David. “Actually, we do want you to go on a trip for us. A rather long trip. But I think you’ll agree that it qualifies as fieldwork. And…I can promise you, no bad chicken dinners!”
“Where do you want me to go?”
“To the Moon, Dr. Alexander. We need you to go to the Moon as quickly as we can get you there.”
“The…the Moon!”
“We have transport waiting for you to take you to O’Hare. We can have you in orbit in two hours, and by tonight you’ll be on your way!”
“That…is quite impossible!”
“You have another appointment?” Roger asked.
He thought about his date with Teri—obviously that wouldn’t be a valid excuse. Besides, he was intrigued now.
“Why would you want me on the Moon?”
“Dr. Alexander,” Sarah told him, “what we have to say to you now is classified. Classified, do you understand? You are not to discuss it with anyone, including the people working for you in this building.”
“I understand.”
“Several hours ago, US Marines captured a small UN base on the Moon. They were looking for a Professor Marc Billaud. You know him?”
David nodded. “I’ve met him several times. Last time was at a conference on ET archeology in Athens, before the war. A good man.”
“The UN Space Command had him at the Lunar site. Apparently, he and a team were in the process of doing some extensive archeological excavations.”
David’s eyes widened. He felt his heart pound. Excavations? On the Moon? “The Builders?…”
“That’s part of what we want you to tell us. Billaud’s notes suggest that there was an ET presence on the Moon, a fairly extensive one…but that it occurred during historical times.”
“How recent?”
“He thinks a few thousand years,” Sarah told him. “There are…artifacts.”
“What was he excavating? A building? A city?”
“Actually,” Sarah told him, “the evidence suggests that it was a spaceship of some kind. A ship that crashed on the Lunar surface something like eight or ten thousand years ago. And that is what makes this investigation so vitally important….”
As she talked, David thought about Mars…and the Ship.
The Face on Mars had been carved by someone half a million years ago, someone who’d built a number of cyclopean structures in the area and apparently used humans imported from Earth to help with the construction. There was even evidence that some sort of massive terraforming project had been under way at the time; most surface features had been damaged or destroyed by a savage flood of liquid water. Many of the human bodies found so far showed evidence of having suffocated as their atmosphere—possibly contained in some sort of field or bubble—bled suddenly away. There was also evidence—lots of it—of a battle, an attack that had ripped open milewide pyramids and left the site in ruins. The Face itself was almost unrecognizable as an artifact carved by intelligence, though the general form and the neatly carved geometries were still visible beneath the rubble.
One of the more enigmatic sites at Cydonia was the hill known as the Fortress. Once, probably, it had been a pyramidal structure like some of the others in the area, but something more powerful than a thermonuclear bomb had sheared off the top, wrecked the inside, and reduced much of it to rubble. Later, a ship of some kind, a vessel over a kilometer long, had toppled onto the ruins, wracked by internal explosions. The wreckage, exposed to the sand-blasting of half a million years of Martian weather, was so poorly preserved it was impossible to learn much.
But the ruins—and especially the promise of the wrecked ship—had been responsible for the revitalization of the on-again, off-again vagaries of the US space program, and of the Russian Space Agency as well. Whoever had built the Cydonian complex had possessed the secret of traveling among the stars; a careful study of the ruins might bring that secret home to Earth.
And more than that. The Builders had been engaged in terraforming on a planetary scale; the ongoing deterioration of Earth’s environment, the coastal flooding and rising global temperatures, had been growing slowly but steadily worse for the past fifty years. The secret of planetary climate control might well prove to be more important, at least insofar as Earth’s continued habitability was concerned, than the secret of traveling to the stars.
And so the infant science of exoarcheology, and its bastard half brother, exotecharcheology, had been born.
On Mars, the problem had been the sheer scale of things, coupled with how damnably difficult it was to get there in the first place. By using a system of space stations, called cyclers, that alternately touched the orbits of Earth and Mars, it had been possible to get
a few hundred people out to the Red Planet over the past decade or so to study the site; the trouble was, it would take thousands of people, working for years, simply to carry out a decent survey of the Martian ruins. It might well be centuries, yet, before Cydonia yielded the last of its long-held secrets.
But if some of those secrets also lay hidden on the Moon, just three or four days away, instead of the six to nine months required for a cycler passage to Mars…
“We can’t tell you everything that’s going on right now,” Sarah was saying. “Suffice to say that it has become an issue of national security. We need a trained archeologist’s assessment of the wreckage, and we need to have an idea of just what the UN scientists might have learned from it.”
“But why me?”
Roger shrugged. “That should be evident. You’ve been to Cydonia. You know as much about the Builders, about exotech, as anyone, and more than most. You are probably the field authority on ET artifacts and technologies.”
And, he thought with a touch of bitterness, I’m here, in your institute, bought and paid for. The other scientists who’d been to Mars—Kettering, Pohl, Vandemeer, and the others—had returned to their old positions, to promotions, to careers made more secure by their fifteen months on Mars. But David had had no place to go but…here. The Cydonian Research Foundation, a government-sponsored organization, had funded the Exoarcheological Institute to study the finds being uncovered on Mars.
And, perhaps, on the Moon as well.
The problem was that David’s reputation as something of a maverick in established archeological circles had made him the ideal candidate for exoarcheologist-in-residence here at the institute.
And it was damned hard to say no to a government-backed request.
“You’re also already rated for a pressure suit and pliss,” Sarah told him.
True enough. In fact, he’d already been to the Moon, briefly, as part of his astronautics training in preparation for his flight to Mars. He’d spent three days at Fra Mauro and been bored most of the time, even with a crowded training schedule.