by Allen Steele
Meanwhile, there was the mystery of the Face itself. The mile-long mesa near the City had clearly been carved to resemble a human visage. From the anthropomorphic evidence, it appeared that the Cooties had knowledge of the human race’s existence on Earth; why else would there be a human face on a planet where homo sapiens had never evolved? Extensive natural erosion to the structures—including a large chasm in the wall of the D & M Pyramid caused by an ancient meteor impact—demonstrated that the Face and the City were thousands of years old, created long before the human race had achieved the ability to travel to other planets. If the aliens had believed that the inhabitants of the third planet would one day venture to Mars, why did they feel it was so necessary to draw the attention of human explorers, considering that humans would arrive long after the demise of the doomed colony?
The answers to these enigmas lay within Pyramid C-4—the last to be opened by the international team of explorers, the first to take lives…
5. The First Casualty
NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time the Burroughs returned to the base. The crew had set up portable floodlights around the perimeter of the habitat, but it was still dark enough that the airship’s touchdown, guided by the flashlights of two expedition members on the ground, was rough. Most of the floods were centered around the wreckage of the two Bushmasters. Oeljanov’s corpse, still inside the bullet-pocked remains of his combat armor, was sprawled near the habitat where he had fallen during his final stand. Overhearing the conversation through the comlink, the surviving Hornet had alighted near the Shinseiki’s lander, but the other Hornet had plowed into the desert several miles away. Miho Sasaki and Spike D’Agostino had taken a tractor out to the crash site to retrieve the remains of Goober Hoffman.
Ben Cassidy found Dick Jessup near Oeljanov, watching as someone used a portable laser to slice through the CAS’s ceramic shell to remove the major’s body. The musician ignored the silent, almost respectful circle of people surrounding Oeljanov. He grabbed Jessup’s left shoulder. ‘Jessup, I want some words with you,’ he demanded.
‘Not now,’ the NASA administrator said softly. He didn’t look up from Oeljanov’s body.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Moberly? Or about the first guy who went in there, the one who was killed as soon as he entered the Labyrinth?’
‘This is not the time,’ Jessup insisted.
‘You son of a bitch, when was the time?’ Cassidy’s voice rose belligerently. The people standing around looked away from Oeljanov toward them. ‘Before you drafted me for this goddamn mission? Or maybe you were afraid that I wouldn’t go along with this if I knew that the last person who went into Room C4-20 was ripped apart like a roast chicken? Christ, all you found was his head…!’
Jessup, saying nothing, pulled his arm out of Cassidy’s grasp and started to walk away. Cassidy grabbed his arm again and hauled him back as he balled his right hand into a tight fist. For a moment, he was able to relish a look of fear through the frost-rimmed faceplate of Jessup’s helmet.
Arthur Johnson, who had been standing nearby, jumped forward and pried Cassidy’s fingers off Jessup’s suit. ‘Cut it out!’ he shouted. ‘If you even crack his helmet, he’ll die before we can get him into an airlock!’
He hauled Cassidy away from Jessup, who had turned around to silently gaze at the two of them. ‘That’s no worse than what he had planned for me!’ Cassidy yelled. ‘What were you planning to do? Throw me in there and see if the room would kill me just like it did with Moberly?’
Johnson, still restraining Cassidy, looked at Jessup. ‘You didn’t tell him about Hal?’ he asked. Jessup said nothing; he only stared at Cassidy. Johnson shook his head within his helmet. ‘Is there anything else you’ve been keeping from us, Dick?’
‘Great. That’s just fabulous.’ Waylon Boggs, who had just joined the circle after checking over the Burroughs, walked up behind Jessup. ‘The way this mission is going so far, we’ll have more bodies to bury around here than the Cooties left in the pyramids.’
‘Leave it to NASA,’ Johnson murmured. ‘Good old Never A Straight Answer…’
‘NASA, like hell.’ Paul Verduin, standing on the other side of the circle, shuffled his feet in the dirt. ‘Any time the American military gets involved, it’s never a straight answer.’
‘Okay! All right!’ Jessup lost his cool; he stepped forward into the ring of accusation which seemed to surround him. ‘You want to know why you weren’t told about Moberly, Ben? You got it right the first time—you wouldn’t have come if I had told you. Art, you want to know why you weren’t informed in advance about Steeple Chase? Because the secret would have leaked to Oeljanov and he would have taken hostages, and maybe more people would have died…’
‘I have a hard time believing that,’ Verduin said. ‘Maksim was many things, but I don’t think he would have taken us hostage. If he wanted to do so, why didn’t he begin the moment your gunships entered the atmosphere? He had the time. I was watching when…’
‘You want to call me a liar,’ Jessup snapped, ‘go right ahead, but maybe you’re all still alive because some secrets were kept.’
No one said anything for a minute; the comlink was silent except for the faint hiss of static. In the glare of the floodlight, the exhaust of their life-support systems rose like smoke from small, smoldering fires. Cassidy was reminded of all the backstage fights he had been part of, back in the days when he still had a band: the times when he was too fucked up on drugs to go out and play, when Jaime and Amad and the session men would haul him away from the mike and into the wings, demanding to know whether he had broken his vow to stay straight for this one gig. And always, he would lie. No, I haven’t touched the shit. I’m just having a bad night, that’s all. I swear, there’s nothing wrong with me. Just one too many beers…
‘Truth sucks, doesn’t it?’ he asked aloud.
Jessup’s eyes darted toward him. His gaze was murderous, but he said nothing.
‘I’ll ask you again, this time politely,’ Johnson said at last. ‘Is there anything else you’re keeping secret from us?’
‘No,’ Jessup said laconically. ‘Nothing.’
‘All right then,’ Johnson said. He let go of Cassidy and motioned towards the habitat. ‘Ben, if you’ll come with me, we’ll get you a cup of coffee and a bite to eat in the wardroom. Then we’ll give you the whole story about the Labyrinth and what happened to Hal Moberly.’ He hesitated. ‘Of course, after you know everything, you may not want to go in there.’
‘Yeah, maybe I won’t,’ Cassidy said. ‘But do I have a choice?’
Within his helmet, Johnson shook his head. ‘Probably not, I’m afraid.’
Module Four of the Cydonia Base habitat was a wardroom which served jointly as the galley, dining area, conference room and recreation area. By the time Cassidy and Johnson got there, though, it had been taken over by Boggs, Katsuhiko Shimoda, Spike D’Agostino and several other crew members. D’Agostino had just returned to the base with the remains of Goober Hoffman; he was in the mood for a wake and Boggs was only too willing to oblige. Shimoda had contributed a flask of saké and Boggs had dug a bottle of whisky out of his locker, and they were proceeding to indulge in a melancholy bender. Neither Johnson nor Cassidy cared to join in. Johnson found some rehydrated roast beef and horseradish in the refrigerator, poured a couple of mugs of black coffee, and the two men retreated to Johnson’s digs in the Module Six bunkhouse, deserted now that everyone else was getting twisted in the wardroom.
‘It’s been a wonderful day.’ Johnson settled down on his bunk and dabbed a slice of beef into the brown puddle on his plate. ‘First I get relieved of command, then I get to see two men killed.’ He shoved the roast beef in his mouth and chewed on it as he gazed at Cassidy, who was sitting on the bunk across from him. ‘What I’m ashamed to admit,’ he continued once he had swallowed, ‘is that I’m the guy who got you into this fix.’
Cassidy stared back at him. ‘Come again?’
‘
My fault. When I listened to the tape of Moberly’s encounter with the Room, I thought it sounded like your improvisational work. In my report to NASA, I said as much in passing. I was suggesting that we develop an artificial intelligence…maybe an AI expert system of some sort…that would copy your guitar style, something which could communicate with C4-20. After all, the Cooties themselves must have had some sort of AI running the Labyrinth, so if there was an AI which could specifically mimic your style…’ He took a deep breath. ‘But someone must have taken me literally. I didn’t think…’
He shook his head regretfully. ‘Damn, Ben, I’m sorry about this. I’ve been listening to your work for years. The last thing I wanted was to get you into this shit.’
Cassidy nodded, absently swabbing some beef in his horseradish before realizing that he wasn’t hungry in the first place. He put the paper plate on the bed. ‘S’okay. They probably would have drafted me anyway.’
‘Drafted? Jeez, you’re my age. You’re too old for the draft. What did they get you on?’
Cassidy sipped his coffee. It was wretched and he put it down on the floor. ‘Taxes and drugs,’ he replied.
‘What about ’em?’
‘I didn’t pay my taxes for a couple of years because I was strung out on drugs. They said I could go to jail or I could go to Mars. I think they came up with my name before they audited the books, but when they did, they found the leverage to get me here. At least, that’s what I figured from what Jessup told me.’
Johnson shook his head with black amusement and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Good old Dick. I should have let you rip his suit back there. Seldom has there been a more two-faced bastard to walk the earth…or Mars, for that matter.’ He picked up another slice of roast beef. ‘Guess that figures. Someone once said that the first casualty of war is the truth.’
‘Well, that’s kind of the problem with my situation, isn’t it?’ Cassidy rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his hands together. ‘I mean, it’s becoming pretty obvious that Jessup didn’t tell me everything when I still had the chance to back out. So what’s the real story here?’
‘I don’t know. What’s the question?’
‘What happened to this guy Moberly? I know he got killed in the Room, but I don’t know how or why, and that somebody else bought it in the Labyrinth. But what’s so important about exploring the place?’
‘Jessup left out a lot, didn’t he?’ Art Johnson sipped from his coffee, made a face and placed his cup on the floor. ‘Hal Moberly…Well, let me start you at the beginning…’
‘When Cydonia Base explorers opened Pyramid C-4 in early 2029, the first thing they found was a small room about the size of a large walk-in closet. The room was featureless, except for another stone door at the opposite end of the chamber. Mounted in the center of the door was a large round button.
‘The first man to enter the room was a Soviet exobiologist, Valery Bronstein. He had the right idea—push the button with his hand to open the door—but when he walked into the room, he stepped on a large round divot placed in the floor. The weight of his body pushed the divot down and, before he or anyone else could react, a one-ton stone block fell from the ceiling and crushed him to death.’
‘Oh God,’ Cassidy said.
Johnson nodded. ‘Once we hauled the block away and removed Valery’s body, someone else approached the problem by extending a rod through the doorway and pushing the door-button with it. The door opened without another block dropping, and we found a corridor leading downward. We followed it to Room C4-2, and that’s when we found the next little test.
‘Room C4-2 was larger than Room C4-1. Again, it had a door at the opposite end, but this time there was a wide slot in the middle, with a narrow bar sticking out of the left side. Above and below the slot were inscribed two horizontal wavy lines, running parallel to each other. As well, the walls of the chamber were lined with narrow, horizontal grooves. This time, the science team cautiously entered the room and studied the slot and the diagrams at length before Johnson himself performed the task that Shin-ichi Kawakami determined was the solution to the new test: he carefully moved the narrow bar along the slot from left to right, exactly following the pattern of the wavy lines.
‘I was scared to death, but the door opened,’ Johnson said. ‘Again, we found a corridor continuing downward to Room C4-3. We checked the grooves in the walls later and found spring-loaded fléchettes in them. Sharp as razors. If I had made the wrong move, they would have ripped me apart.’
‘And the next room was…?’
‘Another test.’ Johnson grinned. ‘Tic-tac-toe, if you can believe it, and another death-trap if you screwed up. This time, the whole blamed floor was rigged to collapse and drop you down a bottomless pit. And that’s the way the whole Labyrinth is designed.’
He traced a descending spiral in the air with his forefinger. ‘It goes down and down and down, room after room, and each room has its own IQ test, a degree more difficult than the last one. Mostly they involve symbology, which is the closest we’ve come to discovering any sort of written language of the Cooties, so the first trick has always been to determine what the symbols mean. By the time we reached Room C4-10 the tests began to involve mathematics, and C4-13 and C4-14 had tests relating to what we know as Newtonian physics. Sometimes it would take us weeks just to figure out what the Cooties were trying to ask, even if the solutions themselves were pretty simple. That seems to be the intent. The rooms want to find out if we can second-guess them.’
He rolled up another slice of beef and swished it around in the sauce. ‘Of course, we took precautions after I went in there. We managed to get some modified Hoplite armor shipped to us, like the ones used by UN peacekeeping troops. Strictly recon stuff…it wasn’t until later that the Russians shipped up that battle armor which Oeljanov was wearing. But it gave the first person entering a new room a certain degree of safety, and we were able to monitor what he or she was seeing and doing from the control module up here. Worked fine. We didn’t lose anyone else, until Hal Moberly entered C4-20.’
‘Okay.’ Cassidy held up a finger. ‘I know that something ripped apart his suit. You lost contact with him right before it happened, but you heard the music just before then. Is that the truth?’
Johnson nodded again. ‘Yep. Sounds as if the only thing they didn’t tell you about C4-20 is that Moberly was killed in there…and that we barely found enough of his body left to fill a bucket.’
‘His head,’ Cassidy said. ‘Part of his armor, and his head.’
Johnson grimaced as he shut his eyes. ‘The rest of him was missing, and damn if I know why.’ Then he looked up again at the musician. ‘But did they tell you that it looks like C4-20 is at the end of the Labyrinth?’
Surprised, Cassidy shook his head. ‘That figures,’ Johnson continued. ‘There are no other doors, but the walls look different. Metallic. Maybe there’s something behind them. If that’s the case, it would fit with Kawakami’s theory that the Cooties knew somebody from Earth was coming. They built the Face to draw our attention, and then they constructed the Labyrinth to make sure whoever explored this place was smart enough to be able to understand…’
Cassidy put up his hands. ‘Hey, slow down. Wait a minute.’ He shut his eyes briefly, trying to concentrate on an unfamiliar pattern of thought. ‘Let me get this straight. These aliens…’
‘Call them the Cooties. Everyone else does.’ Johnson peered at him quizzically. ‘I’m surprised you don’t know about this. Everyone else on Earth seems to.’
‘I’ve only recently been living on Earth again, y’know what I mean.’ Cassidy shrugged and went on before Johnson could ask what he meant by that comment. ‘These Cooties left behind a labyrinth in a dead city here on Mars…’
‘That’s right.’
‘And they built the Face to attract our attention to this place.’
Johnson nodded his head. ‘That’s correct. Go on.’
‘But they built
it thousands of years before we even started dicking around with balloons, let alone rockets.’
Johnson smiled. ‘You’re on the right track.’
Cassidy sputtered, ‘Then how did they know someone was coming from Earth? And if they did know, why make it such a mystery? Why not put up…I dunno, hieroglyphics, a map, some sort of simple instructions? Why go through all this bullshit if they wanted to…?’ He suddenly ran out of steam, unable to verbalize his swarming thoughts.
‘Why go through all this if they simply wanted to establish contact?’ Johnson finished. ‘That’s the thing of it, Ben…we don’t know! Science is like that. You can’t just look at it once and say, “Ah-ha, there’s the answer!” Nothing’s clear-cut and obvious about this deal. There’re riddles within riddles, like an old Chinese puzzle-box or an onion, unpeeling in layers. We’ve got a city which was once occupied by an extraterrestrial race, but they leave behind nothing but a labyrinth, and at the end of it is…’
He paused and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, whatever it is that’s down there. There might be something underneath this whole city structure, something that will explain everything we don’t know about the Cooties. Like, maybe, what brought them here in the first place? Why did they build the City? What’s at the bottom of the Labyrinth that they needed to protect…?’
‘A starship?’ Cassidy asked.
Johnson shrugged again. ‘Who can tell? Both sides would love to find something like that down there. After all, we never found their vessel. It should have been left in orbit, but we don’t know how the Cooties operated. We have no idea what’s down there, but, of course, there’s so much more that we don’t know about the Cooties than what we do know. However, there’s definitely something down there they felt the need to protect with the Labyrinth.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Whatever it is, it has to be big.’