by Brian N Ball
Khalia hid her instinctive horror. What had happened to the colony in the Sirian System was not the fault of the people themselves. Caught in a freak temporal effect, they had hung for two centuries in an unhappy half-life, neither living nor dead. The few that had the resilience to survive that bizarre and traumatic experience had been saved by a chance visit when a Galactic Center ship had called in. Mr. Moonman was one of the survivors.
Khalia tried to answer honestly. “It was here, or the asteroids, or the base on the Moon. I wanted to be in the open again, I suppose. But the main thing was the way it all ended down here—the Confederation. I mean, if it hadn’t, we wouldn’t live in our loose Galactic Union. There’d still be empires.”
Mr. Moonman nodded and looked out at the ruins.
Khalia recalled eerie tales about the Revived. She had heard an old tutor talk about their strange metabolism: they could not age, he had said. Was it true? “Why did you come?” she asked, on impulse.
“You really want to know?” he replied.
“Yes,” said Khalia. She meant it.
“I had this fancy, to visit the beginnings of it all. In a way, like yourself. It’s like visiting the grave of the oldest person you remember from your own childhood. That person’s memories would reach back over the whole of a century. The oldest person he could remember in his childhood would take him back through another century.” He gestured to the ruins. “Machines lying here in the mud will have memories of the days of the Confederation. I hope it doesn’t sound too morbid.”
It did, suddenly. The little group felt the pressures of the past in cold surges. There was too much space.
Danecki found the going easier. A track had been pounded through the scrub, downhill to the ruin. Whether animals or men had made it he couldn’t be sure. Probably animals, for he had to stoop at times to get through tunnels in the thick bushes. He tried to remember what had happened to animal life on Earth after the Mad Wars. Mutants? Carnivores? He shrugged the idea aside.
The Jacobis were the danger.
And then he was through a ravine-like gash in the perimeter defenses, shambling eagerly towards a complex of disordered bays. One whole deck of the fort had been turned on its axis so that vast slits lay open to the rain. Danecki looked down into the black waters of a lake.
“Here, Danecki,” a voice said softly.
Danecki lurched around with a speed that always was insufficient. The Jacobi boy was laughing at him ten yards away. He was a short, well-made youth with curling black hair and white teeth. He looked as happy as a boy seeing his first space-flivver. His only response as Danecki tried to avoid the needle-dart was to smile.
It caught Danecki in the calf, paralyzing his left leg. He knew that the next one would be into his right leg. The Jacobis had fooled him completely. Whilst the bug guarded the rear, they had circled from opposite directions—one on each flank, as the terrain had pushed him, inevitably, toward the fort. They had known that he would try for the high ground where the trees grew thickly. It was the natural course for a hunted animal.
“You die here, Danecki,” the boy smiled.
Where was the other one? “You’re wrong,” Danecki said, as he had tried to say to older and sterner Jacobis. “There’s no reason for this. I wasn’t responsible for them. It was an accident that could have happened to any ship.”
The boy was wildly angry behind the smile. “You killed my sister,” he said. “And her children.”
“An error of judgment I’ll give you,” Danecki said in a tired voice. “Who hasn’t made a mistake?”
“Me.”
Danecki fell into the mud. In this the boy was right. They had hunted him like a pair of professionals. But where was the other Jacobi?
“I think you’ve kept them waiting long enough, Doctor,” said Knaggs.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you, Mr. Knaggs, that our visitors may wish to commune with nature for a few minutes before my guided tour?”
“You’re a horrible fat old bastard,” said Knaggs “You’re keeping them waiting in the rain so they’ll be too wet to do anything but drink in the reception hall.”
“Announce my impending arrival,” ordered Dross.
The green-bronze robot creaked off slowly.
The boy had the glittering gun at his head. Danecki watched the struggle as he aimed at one eye then another. So he was waiting for his brother. They must have worked out how it would be. And if they had had time to plan the manner of his death, it was certain to be peculiarly unpleasant. For no reason at all, he remembered pleading with one of the oldest of the Jacobis, a man of over seventy. That one had the same haunted eyes. He had given Danecki more trouble than any other of the clan— more, oddly, than the boys had been able to give him. Until now. The old man had pursued him with a fierce cunning that took them both spinning across time and space, crossing and recrossing the Galaxy in its entirety until both were worn out. Danecki had sheltered in a whirlpool of dimensional forces.
Too tired to hold his spinning ship, the old man had been taken down into the maelstorm, away from Danecki, and with no thoughts of vengeance—nothing in his tired old head but the wish for rest.
Danecki put his hand to his leg.
“Tired, Danecki?” asked the boy. “Hurting?” Hurt, his eyes said. Feel pain.
There was supposed to be a code of conduct for the licensed victim as well as his hunter. The kill had to be quick and painless. Danecki shuddered.
The boy liked this. He came closer, the gun poised in his brown hand. Danecki clutched at the ground, feeling for the security of the solid ground. His right hand closed on something in the mud. There was no weighing up of chances, no thought whatsoever. The thing bulked in his hand, and it was immediately the weapon he had wished for and not found—as the fort proved to be a desolate ruin where the waters had closed over what might have been an armory. It was heavy, and it came noisily out of the yellow mud.
The boy saw it and he did not shoot.
Danecki saw the metal carapace spinning off the boy’s head, and in a flash of recognition he knew why there had been a total incomprehension on the part of his enemy. He had picked a head out of the mud and smashed the boy’s forehead open with it.
The boy jerked epileptically for a full minute while Danecki tried to get to his feet. The rain swept down on the boy’s limbs and his gray contorted face. What had the blow done to him? His eyes met Danecki’s without recognition. Blood came in a slow trickle from a gash in his head, and in a black flood from his nose and ears.
“Again,” said Danecki to the tormented boy. The old trick of winning had not deserted him. He began to crawl toward the boy to finish him as he had been forced to kill so many of his clansmen. But he stopped. Why harm the youth? More to the point, where was his brother?
Danecki found the leg’s power returning. The pain had diminished, turning to a slow center of grinding corrosion. He crawled to the youth and watched him for a few seconds. Death grew on the wet white face. Then he turned the boy’s head so that he lay face upward to the sky. As he began the slow anguished crawl away from the place of blood, he noticed that the rain was sluicing the dead face.
He had gone a hundred yards when the footsteps splashed behind him. Immediately he tensed. The mud-streaked robot head was in his hand, ready to strike.
“Visitors may not remove artifacts from the Ancient Monument!” the newcomer said severely.
A robot. Danecki flinched and then realized what he was talking to. Ancient Monument… visitors… artifact. They added up to one thing. He was talking to a robotic guide.
“You should not leave your group at any time during the excursion,” the robot chided. “Galactic Center expressly forbids it. Dr. Dross will be here shortly to conduct you to the main observation post.”
The Jacobi youth would not be far behind.
“I hurt my leg. I was resting,” Danecki said.
The robot nodded. “Tourists meet with minor accidents if they stray.”
It confirmed his beliefs.
Danecki considered its humanoid face. Green-bronze, like its elegant body, smooth and well-sculpted. He wondered how he could best explain his presence. And that of the Jacobi. How aware was the robot of human motives, and the extent of human deceit? He had made up his mind. There was a way of turning its presence to advantage. The old skill of decision, instant and unthinking, had not left him. “Another member of the party has also strayed,” Danecki said. “He is a young man called Danecki.”
The robot was of considerable age itself, but it was a sophisticated piece of hardware. Surely it would be able to pick up the heat-emissions of Jacobi’s body? Danecki needed warning of the youth’s approach.
It paused and seemed to sniff the air. It had the appearance of abstractedness, characteristic of humanoids. “Your friend is not in the neighborhood,” it said at last. “And no one of that name is included in the visiting party.”
Danecki rapidly changed the subject. “See to my leg.”
It slit the material with one deft movement and located the dart with a tiny probe.
“I felt a pain,” said Danecki.
“You’ve been shot, sir.”
Danecki’s self-possession barely faltered. “Tell me about the ruin,” he ordered.
The robot would not allow itself to be diverted. “I must report this, sir.”
“Take me to my party,” Danecki countered.
“What is your name, sir?” the robot asked.
“List the names of the party visiting this Ancient Monument.”
“Very well, sir. Mrs. Emma Zulkifar. Mr. Moonman. Miss Khalia Burns. And Brigadier Wardle.”
Danecki felt the strength returning to his leg. The dart had been a limited-duration paralyzing needle. The Jacobi boy had been very sure of himself. “I am Brigadier Wardle,” Danecki said.
“Can you walk, Brigadier?”
“Help me.”
It levered him to his feet. “May I take the artifact, Brigadier?” it asked.
Danecki handed over the mud-streaked robotic head.
“Dr. Dross will want to see this, sir. He may also wish to speak to you about it.”
Danecki thought of the dead youth who lay in the mud. The ghastly carapace had been the only weapon offered by the ancient fort. And now it was to be a museum-piece. He wondered if the robot had sensed the presence of the cold Jacobi boy. Probably not. But there was still the other murderous clansman. “Inform me should a young man with a body-weight of about one-sixty enters the area. He will be my friend Danecki, an unlisted member of the party to visit the Ancient Monument.”
“Very good, sir.” The robot waited. It was clear that it would not permit him to go to any place but the party’s destination. There was the matter of the artifact. And the dart in his leg.
Dross? thought Danecki. I’ve heard of a Dross. He tried not to hurry, but he kept the robot between himself and the threatening greenery of the forest. What else could he do now, but try to find shelter inside the ancient fortification? A visiting party meant an excursion vessel from the big ship that had jinked him out of his orbit. A vessel meant escape. Food, at least. And Dross. The archaeologist!
“You asked about the fortification, sir.”
“So I did.”
The robot began to talk.
“Here’s someone coming now,” said Mrs. Zulkifar.
“Hello. Come out of the rain!” Knaggs called, as he approached the group. “Hasn’t Batty turned up yet?”
“No!” said Wardle sharply. “No one’s come. We’ve been here for a half hour—bad organization, that’s what it is!”
“Are you responsible?” Mrs. Zulkifar inquired.
“Not really,” said Knaggs. “Batty, our pet robot, should have been along before this.”
“Well, he hasn’t!” Wardle snapped.
Khalia was happily wet.
The fort had lost some of its eeriness now that they had waited around for half an hour. But the sensation of awe remained. The vast ruins had mouldered and rusted for ten centuries. It was, as the guidebook had pointed out, a colossal feat of human engineering. Ruins, though, were ruins. They were distant from the terrible wars that had rolled over the planet; they could be approached with a tinge of sentimental awe. Harmless, but inspiring; vaguely threatening, without being specifically dangerous.
Khalia began to realize that this was why she was so excited. It was like seeing the caged tiger. It peered back but it had no power to harm. The fort was only the shadow of its once-terrible self.
And now a charming little man had come to show her around. It was entirely appropriate that on this planet the tour should have got off to a disorganized start. Mr. Knaggs introduced himself.
“The Doctor should be here soon,” he said. “Old Batibasaga—Batty, we call him—was sent to take you down below, but he must have had a lapse of memory. I’m just Knaggs the systems engineer, so the Doctor uses me as a messenger when Batty breaks down. All ready?”
“I’m not sure I want to go anywhere else,” Mrs. Zulkifar said. “These do-it-yourself tours are all very well, but how do we know what’s going on? At least when we did the Zero-Alpha Complex, there was a fully automatic strip right through it. And a commentary.”
“Not many tourists come here,” said Knaggs. “It wouldn’t pay to automate fully.”
“Come, Mrs. Zulkifar,” said the Brigadier. “You must press on now. It’s the most perfectly preserved military installation of all. And, you never know, there might be a bit of excitement—there’s the legend—ah—Emma.”
Khalia found Knaggs catching her eye. He winked. “You’ll find the Doctor exciting enough,” he said.
Danecki allowed the robot to stutter out the whole history of the fort. He learned about the Second Interplanetary Confederation and Dross’s researches into its greatest fortification. He and the robot trudged through mud and over a carpet of brilliant yellow flowers.
“So there won’t be a ship here for days,” Danecki was saying when they reached a relatively untouched building amongst a mass of black, twisted fallen towers.
“Very doubtful, sir. Dr. Dross receives supplies from time to time, but it might be that the Center vessel will not call here this trip.”
Danecki maintained a flow of questions. He was not surprised when the robot told him that there were no weapons among Dross’s equipment, and that when ancient but still operative weapons were turned up in the dig, they were immediately rendered harmless by Dross’s engineer, Knaggs.
“I need a hot drink,” he said to the robot. “I’ve had a shock. It is necessary for a man who has been hurt.”
The robot was uneasy. “I really think we should meet the Doctor now. He will have taken the rest of the party to the main observation deck. You, of course, have been very flattering both in your interest in the dig and in my capabilities. I fear, Brigadier, that I may have overstepped the mark in remaining with you for so long. I should have given the party a message by now.”
“Weren’t you ordered always to consider the comfort of official guests?” Danecki parried.
“Oh, yes, sir!”
“Then get me coffee. And whatever food there is.”
“Very well, sir.”
There might not be an opportunity to eat in the immediate future. And, by keeping the robot in conversation, Danecki wished to gain more information about the resources of the archaeological base. It might be that there was a land-craft tucked away.
The robot brought food and coffee. Danecki ate and drank. He had been at the controls of the little hyperspace ship for hours. It was almost a whole day—nearly twenty-four hours—since he had slept. Curiously, he felt no fatigue. That would come later, when reaction set in.
Things had gone amazingly well, though he could not be grateful for his good fortune. It had meant yet another in the long series of violent deaths. The face of the Jacobi boy would stay with him, awake and asleep, for months. He would remember the clear eyes and the rain on t
he boy’s face.
Danecki drank more rapidly. For over a year now he had been developing the skill of reacting instantly to desperate situations. He had learned the trick of staying alive. It was not a trick you could glow with pride about.
“How about personal transportation?” he asked. “I expect the Doctor must spend a good deal of time surveying the area?” Danecki was afraid he had gone too far.
The robot was poised, still, frozen.
“Well?” Danecki said.
The robot turned. “You must ask Dr. Dross yourself, sir. It would be in order for us to go to meet him at the main observation deck in the fortification below. It is approached by means of a spin-shaft. It is fortunate that your friend can join us, Brigadier.”
Danecki stared and then remembered that he had told the robot he was a Brigadier Wardle. And that another member of the party was somewhere in the ruins. “Friend?” he asked, deadpan.
“You requested me to locate a young man, sir. Body weight one-six-five. Would that be a Mr. Danecki, Brigadier?”
* * *
CHAPTER 3
Dross thrust his bulk ahead of him so that Khalia wondered if his big chest and vast belly would cause him to topple forward. He was infuriated with Mrs. Zulkifar.
“Madam, I am Dr. Dross!” he boomed. “Not your guide, as you call it. And if you’ve been kept waiting here for a mere half hour, you should regard yourself as fortunate! You have the opportunity of experiencing the finest piece of archaeological scholarshp in the modern Galaxy, Madam. And I, Dross, am in the process of showing it to you.”
“Are you coming?” Khalia asked Knaggs quietly.
He hesitated. “If you like.”
“Please,” she said.
“This way!” Dross bellowed in an unnecessarily loud voice. He had effectively quieted Mrs. Zulkifar. “We go to my principal discovery, the main observation deck of this unique fortification.” He led the way through the swirling rain to a hole in the ground. Khalia looked. The hole contained a shifting, colored whirlpool of force-fields.