by Sarah Rayne
The Casket was of Earth-design.
It had been brought from the dying world of their ancestors.
Chapter Two
As they lifted the Casket from its half-buried place, it seemed as if the livid colours of the sunset were already trickling away and the black and purple fingers of night were stealing silently across the Twilight Mountains and shrouding the ruined Settlement. The wind that had snatched at Fenella’s loose hair earlier moaned all about them, scurrying into their faces, breathing dry, sour air. Fenella tasted the coppery taint again and flinched.
Floy glanced at the darkening Mountains and said, ‘I think we should go back, while there is still sufficient light.’ He moved as he spoke, prising the Casket out of its hole, directing the others to each take a comer.
The light was draining faster now and there was a movement somewhere inside it, as if something they could not quite see might be moving or breathing. Fenella received the sudden, startling image of a great, black creature circling round and round where it crouched, making itself a nest, watching from beyond the skies, licking its lips …
She took a deep breath and wished she had not remembered all the stories about the Old Settlement being haunted by the ghosts of the Earth-people. Perhaps this was how they had started, out here at dusk, with the odd, foul-smelling wind blowing down from the Mountains. It was sufficiently nasty to make anybody think about ghosts and strange sinister mountain creatures.
And yawning caverns in the skies that were not therefor our ancestors, but are there for us, and that appear in our Star Maps exactly like the slavering maws of monsters …
I won’t think about it, said Fenella silently. I’ll concentrate on helping to bring out the Casket, and I won’t look towards the mountains, and I definitely won’t look up at the skies. And if there was anything inside the Casket, it would be extremely interesting. Snizort and Snodgrass would be sure to ask her to help them in the sorting of whatever they found, and deciding if anything could be displayed in the Mnemosyne. Perhaps there would be an article to be written for the Renascian News, telling about the Casket’s discovery.
She took a comer of the Casket and helped the others to half carry, half drag it out of the decayed house and put it on a cart to carry it down to the pitted and narrow track that would take them back to their own part of Renascia. It was very dark up here now, and it would be nice, it would be comforting to be amidst lights and warmth and people and ordinary things like fireplaces and books and furniture and food.
They took the Casket straight to Snizort and Snodgrass’s little house which was nearer than their own, and hauled it down the narrow garden path. The Casket was not very big, but it was heavy, and a bit awkward.
‘The study, I think,’ Snizort said, helping them through the old-fashioned garden and into the warm, firelit study. ‘We’ll just put it down on the floor for the moment.’
The light had drained completely as they set the Casket down, and Snizort turned to light a fire in the hearth. Warmth and light burned up, driving back the creeping shadows.
The Casket seemed smaller than it had done earlier, and suddenly rather sad. Fenella thought it was somewhere around four feet in length and about two feet in depth. Not so very big at all. But it was made of something none of them recognised; something that was pale and cool and very strong indeed.
Floy, touching the comers warily, said, ‘There’s no sign of tarnishing or corrosion,’ and then, with sudden excitement, ‘it’s made of the same stuff as their Ark.’
And Snodgrass said, ‘Bless my soul, so it is.’
‘It’s seamless,’ said Fenella, kneeling down on the floor to get a better look, tracing the edges with one finger. ‘Except for the lid, it isn’t joined anywhere.’
‘Nor it is.’
The Casket’s corners were rounded and there were thick bands of a darker coloured iron surrounding it. And although Floy was right and there was no trace of blackening or tarnishing, here and there it was pitted as if some strong, burning substance had been spilled on it. The immense hinges were intact and the clasp at the front looked as if it was made of something that might be virtually indestructible.
Fenella caught the tail-end of a thought from Floy.
This is something our ancestors did not intend us to lose … This is something they wanted to make sure would reach us …
Fenella found that she was remembering a phrase, a myth, an old, old legend about a magic box that had belonged to somebody with a strange name. Pandora, was it? Yes, Pandora. Pandora had possessed a box, and it had contained the most remarkable assortment of things. Some of them had been good and beautiful and helpful, and some had been ugly and sinister and dangerous. I believe, thought Fenella, safe and warm in Snizort and Snodgrass’s warm cluttered safe-feeling house, I believe that in that iron or steel-bound box is something ugly and sinister and dangerous, and I really do wish it had stayed buried in the Old Settlement.
Snodgrass thought they ought to take a bite of supper before they got down to opening the Casket and Floy at once said, ‘Thank you, yes. We should enjoy that.’ Snodgrass looked pleased and took himself off to the kitchen which was hung with bunches of herbs and lined with gleaming copper pots. This was where he wrote articles for the Renascian News about how to cook peculiar foods that nobody had heard of, the ingredients for which could not be procured on Renascia anyway.
Fenella liked this house, where there were always huge fires burning, and deep comfortable armchairs, and desks piled high with books, which you had to be careful not to sit on by mistake. It was in the busiest part of Renascia, with all the groceries and bakeries, and places that sold cooked pies and made up remedies for illnesses. Fenella and Floy lived in their family’s house, which was large and stood in the centre of Renascia, and had been built by their ancestors shortly after the fire at the Old Settlement. It was quite grand, but Fenella did not think it possessed the same tumbled charm or the same warmth and feeling of safety that this one did.
The supper was something called Steak and Kidney Pudding, which Snizort said had once been a great favourite of their Earth-ancestors, although Snodgrass said you could not get absolutely all the ingredients on Renascia.
‘And so we don’t think it’s a true steak and kidney pudding,’ he explained, giving everyone huge helpings. ‘It needs something called suet, and we haven’t been able to fathom what that is.’
In fact, the pudding was wholly delicious, and Fenella had two platefuls. There was rich elderberry wine, sweet and strong, and Snodgrass had three glasses, and unbent to tell them all manner of scandalous stories about the Council of Nine in Fenella and Floy’s father’s day, and about how Quilp was not averse to an occasional bit of ponderous dalliance with the very young ladies who were employed in the Wine Shop, and Snizort beamed and rubbed his hands together, because he loved gossip and would incorporate it into his Diaries.
And then, without the least warning, they all stopped talking, and looked at one another and Fenella felt her heart give a sudden jolt before it resumed its normal beating. The time had come and they were going to open the Casket and discover what was inside. Pandora’s Box. Oh please, no, she thought.
But you cannot unmake an event, said Fenella silently, staring at the Casket. Even if we took it back to the ruined Settlement and covered it over with debris and rubble, we would still know about it. We would still have found it, it would still be there. We would wonder what it was, and why it had been constructed so strongly and so carefully. We would always wonder whether it had contained something that we needed to know about.
And, in any case, it might tell us something about what is happening on Renascia now, thought Fenella, firmly.
Floy was not thinking on precisely the same lines as Fenella, but he was not very far off. He was tremendously curious about the discovery; the Casket was more strongly made than anything they had ever found of the first Settlers, and he found this odd and intriguing.
He knelt down a
nd unfastened the plain strong clasp. There was a click, unexpectedly loud in the quiet room, and Fenella felt her heart begin to beat loudly and painfully.
The hinges were clogged with the accretion of several centuries’ dust and dirt and Floy and Snodgrass scraped diligently at them until they were free. The dust had a strange smell to it; it did not smell of ordinary dust, the sort you brushed up from the floor, or found behind a cupboard you had not moved for a while. Fenella, curled into the deep soft chair at the side of the fire, felt her fingers curl into her palms in sudden apprehension because, just for a second, she had thought it was going to be the horrid, harsh sourness of the flurrying wind they had encountered in the Settlement.
And then Floy scraped some more of the accretion away, and she knew it was something quite different; it was the bitter-sweet scent of extreme age; of lost worlds and dead civilisations and forgotten empires. Tears pricked her eyes, and she felt the ache of loss for that long-ago world, for the kingdoms that must have risen and then fallen, for the learning and the wisdom and the legend and lore that they would never know about.
For the misty turquoise and blue Earth, the dead world of their ancestors, that still lay in the skies far beyond their reach …
Slowly, warily, Floy prised the Casket open and pushed back the lid.
No one spoke and there was no sound in the room now except the steady ticking of the clock over the fireplace.
When a log fell apart in the hearth, Fenella jumped and when Floy spoke, he did so in a whisper.
‘Earth craftsmanship,’ he said, and there was something near to reverence in his voice now. ‘See?’ He touched the inner surface of the Casket gently. ‘And made from exactly the same substance as the Ark. It’s something we’ve never been able to reproduce.’
‘Pale and hard and cold,’ said Fenella.
‘Some kind of metal they had which we do not?’ hazarded Snodgrass.
‘Truly, I have no idea. Perhaps they were somehow able to blend metal. Perhaps this is a mixture of several metals,’ said Floy. ‘That would be interesting.’ He touched the Casket’s inner sides again. ‘But it must be something they would believe to be indestructible.’
Indestructible. That word again.
The inside of the Casket was as seamless as the outside. It was almost as if the unknown stuff had been melted and poured in and then allowed to set. It was cool to Floy’s touch and had a dully gleaming surface. At the Casket’s centre were hinged layers of the same pale, cold substance, not thick, but fitting so tightly that Floy had to borrow Snizort’s paper knife to prise them up. There was a teeth-wincing, metal-against-slate sound, and then the hinged sections lifted up and folded back.
‘It’s very precisely made,’ said Snizort, who was seated at his desk, his spectacles firmly on his nose, scribbling notes.
‘Yes.’ Floy was kneeling over it again, reaching inside.
Inside again —
Floy reached into the Casket very gently and Fenella knew he was thinking, as she was thinking, as they were all thinking, that they were about to uncover something brought from Earth, something so ancient that they could barely comprehend it, but something from those long-ago ancestors who had built a marvellous world and then had to leave it to die.
We have only the sketchiest information about that world, thought Fenella, watching Floy. We do not know about its ending. But now, perhaps, we are going to learn more.
Using both hands, Floy lifted out several objects that Fenella had been unconsciously expecting to be papers. And then Floy said, very softly, ‘Not papers,’ and Fenella knew they had both been expecting the same thing.
Floy said, ‘Gold. Look. Isn’t it? Thin sheets of gold.’ He bent over the sheets, his black hair tumbled, his eyes intent, and then looked up at them, his eyes brilliant, fingers of colour painted across his cheekbones. ‘Engraved with writing,’ he said. ‘Earth writing.’
‘Truly?’ said Snizort.
‘I don’t think it can be anything else,’ said Floy. ‘Can it?’ He handed the top sheet to Snizort, who pored over it for a moment. Fenella held her breath.
Snizort said at last, ‘Dear me, Floy, I believe you are right. There is the same way of forming letters that we found in the original houses in the Settlement, and the same way of setting out words.’ He traced the sheet of gold with a fingertip.
Floy’s eyes were shining. ‘Then this is a letter to us from the people of the dying Earth,’ he said. ‘A message from a lost world.’
To begin with, Fenella and the two brothers did not altogether take in the flow of words. The Earth-people wrote in a curious blend of informality and something that was very nearly instruction. Fenella thought that whoever had written these words — perhaps quite a number of people — had wanted to convey information, but in a friendly fashion. And although they did not use a different language, although they used familiar words and familiar phrases, they did not use them in quite the way the Renascians did. Perhaps they had been unused to writing like this at all. Perhaps they had had machines that did all their writing for them. Perhaps it was simply that ways of speech change …
Fenella felt a thrill of mingled fear and excitement. She did not move from the fireside chair she had curled herself into, but she thought she was more alert and more aware than she had ever been before in her whole life.
‘To those of you who will eventually read this message, we say Greetings and Hello.’
Neither a word familiar to any of them, but clearly both meaning some kind of salutation. Floy frowned, and then continued.
‘We believe we may be the last of a dying world and, certainly, there is little time left to us. Already the light is draining from the World, and therefore we must be brief … ’
The light is draining … The four Renascians looked at one another for a moment and shared a thought: so Earth experienced it as well! The light draining from the days, eroding the hours of daylight … Something cold and implacable and ancient crept into the firelit study.
Fenella, watching Floy’s expression, received a fleeting, vivid image of those last Earth-dwellers, huddled together in a cave or the ruins of a destroyed building, summoning their final resources and their strengths, fighting for a place in one of the machines that had brought the survivors to Renascia. And the world burning and dying all about them … hungry and thirsty and exhausted … ‘The light is draining from the World … ’
Floy’s voice said again, ‘The light is draining from the World, and therefore we must be brief and we must hand on to our descendants — if descendants we are to have — the story of how we destroyed the world … We must do so while there are still the resources for us to do so …
‘For we were the men and women of science and of knowledge, and that is why we, out of Earth’s survivors, have the means to leave our world … That is why we have been chosen.’ A pause.
Fenella thought: ‘The men and women of knowledge … The ones chosen to go … ’ There was a sudden, unwelcome, impression of pride and complacency and arrogance. There was certainly the suggestion of a hierarchy of some kind, a society that was too-strictly layered, that gave privileges to a tiny sprinkling of its people while the rest must take their chance.
It had been only the Chosen Ones who had left Earth, while the rest had been condemned to remain. Was that what the last Earth-dwellers had been like? Haughty and uncaring and self-seeking? Oh, please no, thought Fenella, leaning forward, clasping her hands tightly together. Please don’t let them have been any of those things.
And then Floy’s voice said, ‘Despite all our knowledge and all our science, we have lost our world and we believe that only a few of us can now survive, and try to save Mankind and Fenella knew that it was all right; the Earth-people had not been arrogant or complacent; they had been trying to make the best use of what was left to them.
Floy said, ‘There are other worlds, and there are other ages, and it is to those worlds and to those ages, we now speak.
‘We cannot show you what we made of our world, and what we are about to lose.’ Again there was the break in Floy’s voice and Fenella knew that he, also, was seeing, albeit briefly, the terrible loneliness and feeling the dreadful desolation of the dying world. Because, of course, he would sympathise and, of course, he would be feeling the pain they had felt all those centuries ago. He has a skin short, my brother …
Floy said, ‘We were proud of what we had created, and we should have liked to show you the power we had and the beauty and the strength. We should have liked to be able to record the learning and the history and the science and the — ’ Floy stopped and said, ‘I think the next word is technology and I think it would mean their degree of learning.’ He glanced up and Snizort nodded, because it was a word he had come across.
‘It is a little like that other word they used, science,’ he said and Floy nodded, understanding.
‘But it is all lost to us. It is gone beyond recall and our world is dying. It is dying and burning all about us and there is little time left. We know that Earth must be abandoned and, within our group, there are people who have studied the stars and others who have the knowledge of — ’ Floy stopped and frowned.
‘They say space travel,’ he said. ‘I cannot understand that.’
‘Their means of reaching us, would it be?’ said Fenella. ‘I think it must be,’ said Floy. ‘For they must have possessed that knowledge. Yes, of course they must. We know they came here in the Ark, and there must have been some means of sending it here.’
Snodgrass said, ‘And they say that there are people within their group of survivors with the knowledge.’
‘Yes.’ Floy looked back at the thin golden tablet.
‘It rather sounds,’ said Snizort, thoughtfully, ‘as if they had managed to gather together people who had studied these things for many years, and who would therefore be of practical use. I could believe in that very easily, you know.’