City of Ruins du-2

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The guide doesn’t seem to notice. He’s watching Bridge for some kind of reaction.

  “I take it your scientists have studied this,” Bridge says.

  The guide nods.

  “What do they think happened?”

  He shrugs.

  One of the medics steps forward. He has been watching Ivy. “Our scientists say it’s not harmful. We’ve brought hundreds of people down here. No one has gotten ill. No one has had black grow on them. It doesn’t seem to leave the cavern.”

  “And it goes all the way back?” Bridge asks him.

  “All of the caves have it,” the medic says.

  “All of the caves on this side of the city,” Bridge says.

  “No,” the medic says. “All of the caves in the Basin.”

  I feel my breath catch. Mikk glances at me, apparently trying to see if I’m following the discussion. He doesn’t seem real sure about it.

  But Mikk knows more about relics and history and shipwrecks and diving. He has never professed to know much about science.

  “But you said there was no black when there was a cave-in.” Roderick has joined the discussion. He’s looking at the leader. “Have you seen it grow before?”

  The guide looks trapped. “I haven’t, no.”

  “But there have always been stories,” says the medic. “Quarantined houses because they accidentally punch through the subbasement wall, and then the entire lower level is subsumed.”

  “What do you mean lower level?” Bridge asks.

  “The subbasement. The basement. Anything below ground.”

  “But the black stops when it gets above ground?” Bridge asks.

  The medic nods.

  “Even if that above ground area is protected by a roof or shade?” Bridge asks.

  The medic nods again.

  “Is this simply rumor or do you know this as a fact?” Bridge asks.

  The medic rubs his hands together. It’s his turn to give his colleagues an uneasy glance. “Fact,” he says. “My grandparents lost their home to a quarantine when I was a boy.”

  “So you’ve seen the growth before,” Bridge says.

  The medic nods.

  “How come you don’t study it?” Bridge asks. “You needed to study science to have medical training. Why didn’t you branch into a study of the cave walls?”

  “That’s not a course of study,” the medic says.

  I frown. I’m not quite sure what Bridge is getting at, but I’m finding the path there interesting.

  “The walls aren’t a course of study,” Bridge says.

  “That’s right.”

  “But don’t the local geologists want to know about this? Or do you think it belongs in the biological sciences? Maybe bio-chem?”

  The medic seems confused. The lead guide steps in again.

  “We are a small city,” he says. “We don’t have the scientific resources available to people from other places.”

  “Surely you could have brought them in,” Bridge says.

  “It’s a natural phenomenon,” the guide says. “Nothing more.”

  And with that, he has clearly closed off his part of the conversation.

  I’m trying to review the data I’ve studied about the Vaycehn ruins. I remember mention of growth on the walls, but not this. And I seem to recall that the implication was that the growth preexisted the discovery, that it didn’t grow afterward.

  “Is the material removable?” I ask Ivy. After all, she’s the one who has been studying the tips of her gloves, where she touched the blackness.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “We’ll take a sample,” Bridge says. “Not just here, but at the top. We’re at a disadvantage, though. We’re to look for a certain kind of tech, which is a higher form of physics than we’re familiar with. I don’t think this is.”

  I appreciate Bridge’s discretion. He doesn’t mention stealth tech in front of the guards.

  “Because this stuff grows?” Roderick asks. “Or because it stops near the surface.”

  “Certain fungi won’t grow above a certain level. The different environment on the surface doesn’t allow the growth.” Ivy is still rubbing her fingertips together, as if she’s afraid of what she touched.

  “Yeah, but to grow that fast…” Mikk lets his voice trail off when several of the others stare at him. “Right? Nothing grows that fast.”

  “Bacteria does,” Ivy says. “So do a lot of other natural organisms. You just don’t encounter most of them in a vacuum.”

  Meaning that those of us who work primarily in space are ignorant of what we’re facing here. Which is probably true. Although I knew that many things grow quickly. Just because we work in space, doesn’t mean we haven’t encountered deadly bacteria or viruses that run through a space station in a matter of hours.

  But I’m staying silent through this discussion. That’s one of the many management tricks I’ve learned. I hire the best I can find. I have to trust them to do their work, which is what this speculation is.

  Bridge turns back to the lead guide. “Was this room shaped like this, then, when the blackness came?”

  The guide shakes his head. “This was a—” He pauses, as if he had been about to say something forbidden. “A certain kind of cave-in. The blackness covered it and created the shaft. That’s why no one came down here for years. They were afraid they’d get trapped inside.”

  “But the growth stopped,” Bridge says.

  The guide nods.

  “After the chamber was formed.”

  The guide nods again.

  “Fascinating.” Bridge glances at me. His eyes seem brighter than usual. He’s excited about this.

  “We’re spending our day here?” I ask him.

  “I think this is important,” he says. “We need a lot of samples.”

  I try not to sigh. I want to go deeper, to see what’s ahead. I just want a sense.

  Then I realize that he doesn’t need all of us for the samples. “You and Ivy and Roderick stay here. I want Dana and Mikk to accompany me farther into the tunnels. I want to know what’s ahead so that we can plan.”

  This is not how a dive would work. On a dive, we would all stay together and let the person whose work takes precedence take charge of that part of the mission.

  But my archeologist, scientist, and historian don’t know that. Only Roderick and Mikk do. They’re looking at me in surprise, but they say nothing. They know this is a different kind of exploration.

  “You,” I say, pointing to the lead guide. “You’ll join us, along with you—” I point to the medic who told us about the blackness “—and whatever pilot you feel is necessary.”

  “It’s not accepted protocol to break up the group,” says the lead guide.

  “But it’s not accepted protocol to stop here, either, is it?” I say.

  He nods once, reluctantly.

  “We’re trained for dangerous situations, just like you are. We’ll take every precaution we can. And we won’t be gone long.” I say that last for the three I’m leaving behind.

  The guide looks at the other two members of his team helplessly. They say nothing. He goes to the cart I rode in on and climbs aboard. After a moment, the medic joins him.

  Then I get in, followed by Mikk and Dana.

  “Where are we going?” the guide asks with that bitterness he seems to reserve only for me.

  I give him my most level look. “We’re going to the edge of the section where the fourteen archeologists died.”

  ~ * ~

  FIVE

  The group stirs around me. Apparently they think I’ve just contradicted myself. I say we’re going to be safe, and then I suggest something reckless.

  But I’m not going to justify anything. I need to see that site to know what we’re facing. I won’t get close. I doubt the lead guide will let me very close anyway. He seems a lot more cautious than I am.

  I’m paying so much attention to the negative reaction from m
y team, I almost miss what the lead guide is saying.

  “They didn’t die in one place.”

  We all turn toward him.

  He looks pleadingly at Bridge. “We do not always know where there is danger.”

  Bridge raises his eyebrows as he looks at me. He’s asking if I want to change my mind.

  “If we’re looking at the same stuff we’ve seen before,” I say, unwilling to use the words “stealth tech,” “then we need to know where it begins and ends. We have to map it.”

  Mapping is a big part of diving. The more we know, the more detail it’s in, the better off we are. I realize as I say that we need to map that I’m moving myself back to a more comfortable, familiar position.

  Apparently, I’m more on edge than I realize.

  “Surely you have maps of the places you know are dangerous,” Bridge says to the guide.

  “Of course,” he says. “We all carry them. We do not want to accidentally go down the wrong corridor.”

  “Good,” I say. “Then we’ll be safe.”

  “Don’t get close,” Bridge says, but it’s more for the guide than for me.

  Still, I nod.

  Roderick lets out the breath he’s been holding. He comes closer to our cart. “Maybe I should go with you,” he says.

  I understand the implication. I’m the only one of this group who has the marker and can work in stealth tech. I’m also the only pilot on the mini-mission. If I’m somehow disabled, then the entire group has to rely on the Vaycehnese pilot, who clearly doesn’t have the skills Roderick and I do.

  “I’d rather have you close to the exit,” I say.

  He nods. He understands. He has to be here and be ready should we need to get someone out quickly. He knows I’ll contact him if I can.

  We all wear small communicators around our ears. A single tap, and we can speak to each other. I’ve already tested to see if mine works down here. It does, although I’m not sure I can contact the others back at the hotel.

  “You cannot talk her out of this?” the lead guide says to Bridge.

  Bridge laughs. “Me? She’s the one in charge.”

  “And that,” the guide mumbles loud enough for all of us to hear, “is why no one should ever listen to a woman.”

  We all ignore his protest. Instead, I tap the top of the pilot’s seat ahead of me.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  As I do, Mikk says to me, “Should we suit up?”

  The guide hears. He turns toward us. “In your space suits?”

  Mikk isn’t looking at him. Mikk is watching me.

  “We have air here. We have cool air here. Drink your water and you will be fine,” the guide says.

  But Mikk is waiting for my answer. They all are.

  “We’re not going inside the area where they died,” I say. “We’re just going to figure out where that area is.”

  “Those areas,” the guide says again. “There is more than one.”

  “Still,” I say to Mikk. “We’ll just look. We won’t go deep.”

  He sighs, but nods, then settles back in his seat. The pilot still hasn’t moved.

  “I guess we should go, then,” Mikk says.

  The guide hasn’t said anything. He’s still looking at me. “We cannot see all the death sites.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “They overlap,” he says.

  I frown. I think I know what he means, but I’m not sure. The measurements of the station that houses the Room of Lost Souls have changed in the intervening years, as if the station is growing. Squishy, my stealth-tech expert, theorizes that the station is slipping out of one dimension into another.

  If we are looking at stealth tech and not some localized phenomenon, then it would be logical to have the areas where the dead were found encroach on other areas.

  “Show us what you can,” I say.

  “From a safe distance,” Bridge adds.

  That surge of resentment is back. But he hasn’t said that because the guide will listen to him instead of me. He’s said that because he wants me to be as careful as possible.

  “I do not go close to those places,” the guide says. “I have warned my tours against them.”

  And he’s trying to warn me.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and this time the guide gives the order. The cart moves forward, deep into the chamber, the strange blue lights reflecting off the cart’s surface like sunlight on the edge of a shuttlecraft.

  We pass four corridors before turning down one. Mikk is using his wrist guide to record all of this. I’m doing the same. Carmak is watching everything as if she’s never done anything like it before.

  I guess, if you don’t count the tourist dives I’ve taken her on, she never has.

  “Do you have a spiel for this part of the tunnels?” I ask the lead guide.

  He swallows hard, and then nods. After a moment, he leans forward. “We do not know how to date these,” he says. “The blackness looks the same throughout, but the lighting is different.”

  He sweeps his hand upward. For the first time, I notice that the lights have changed from that cool blue to a frosty white. The air is even cooler here, to my relief.

  I’m almost beginning to feel at home.

  “Our own history says that the first settlers found these caves. They used them as a base while building the first city of Vaycehn.”

  “Which means that someone was here before them,” Carmak says.

  The guide looks at her. “We believe these tunnels have grown,” he says. “We believe they are natural.”

  He says that with the conviction of a devout man who has just heard something potentially damaging about his own religion.

  “Even the lights?” Mikk asks.

  The guide shrugs. “We think some early settlers may have put them in.”

  “Like you put in the blue lights in the chamber,” I say in my most agreeable tone.

  The guide looks down. I feel a surge of excitement. They didn’t put in the lights. The lights formed when the black smoothness formed.

  “What kind of records are there of that first settlement?” Carmak asks. “Did you find actual evidence of their existence?”

  She can barely contain the eagerness in her voice. The guide hears it and smiles for the first time.

  “We found a lot of evidence,” he says. “You can find it all re-created in the City Museum of Vaycehn. The section on the first settlement takes up an entire floor.”

  “What did you find?” I ask. “Furniture? Clothing? Equipment?”

  “Yes to all,” he says. “We found so much that the museum staff is still cataloguing.”

  “I’m sure there are items that can’t be catalogued,” Mikk says. He’s gone with me on many dives since the Room of Lost Souls. On the Dignity Vessels we’ve found, we’ve recovered all kinds of things, from spoons to devices that make music with the touch of a button.

  He’s always been fascinated with those things, and he seems fascinated now.

  “Yes,” the guide says, only now he’s leaned back, reluctant again. Does he think we’re going to loot their museum? Or does he simply not want to talk about things he does not know for certain? “There are hundreds of items we can’t identify. The City Museum has hired experts to evaluate these things.”

  Experts. He says that as if we’re amateurs. I suppose, on some level, we are. We don’t care about Vaycehn or even Wyr history. We care only about the possibility of stealth tech in this place.

  The guide suddenly sweeps his arm toward yet another corridor. “Down there,” he says. “The first two archeologists died down there.”

  We are hovering in the corridor we’ve come down, several meters from the entrance to the other corridor.

  “How close can we get?” I ask.

  “This is close enough,” the guide says.

  The pilot’s hands are gripped tightly on the controls. His knuckles have turned white.

  “How far away did they die?” I a
sk.

  “What do you mean?” the guide says, frowning at me.

  “A meter? A kilometer? How deep were they in that other corridor?”

  “Seven meters,” the medic says.

  The guide glares at him.

  “My father was on the recovery team.”

  “They got the archeologists out?” I ask. We’ve had to abandon a corpse to stealth tech before we knew that I could brave it and survive.

  “No,” the medic says. “But it was clear they were dead.”

  “They were mummified, right?” I ask.

  The medic nods. “He says he’s never seen anything like it.”

  “Have you?” Mikk asks.

  The medic closes his eyes. “Four times,” he says softly.

  I put my hands on the side of the cart and ease out. The floor is slippery here too. I have to hold onto the hovering cart to get my balance.

  I hate that part of gravity. I want to float to my destination, not walk toward it on unsafe surfaces.

  The guide grabs my wrist. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “I’m only going to the entrance,” I say.

  His grip remains tight. “No,” he says. There’s real fear in his voice. “I told you, the areas change. If we’re wrong about where it begins, it will kill you.”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Mikk says. “It can’t kill her.”

  The guide stares at him for a moment, then looks back at me. “It kills everyone.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I cannot be responsible for your death. If something happens, I will blame your recklessness. I will say you were warned and you ran away from us and we couldn’t catch you.”

  “Cover your ass as best you can,” I say. “I have nothing against that. And if I’m dead, my reputation won’t matter at all.”

  Mikk grins. The medic has gone pale. The guide looks ill, but he lets go of my wrist. His fingers have left red marks on my skin.

  I resist the urge to rub it as I walk cautiously down the slick corridor. It feels even colder closer to the ground. The lights come on as I move—thin, white things that somehow manage to cover every centimeter of the place.

  I am listening as much as observing. The active stealth tech that I have been near makes a series of sounds that my brain interprets as music—usually choral voices singing in harmony. The weaker stealth tech sounds like humming, and the tiny stealth tech I’ve encountered—my father had a working bottle experiment—had a sound so faint that I had to strain to hear it.