City of Ruins du-2

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  But I did hear it.

  At the moment, I hear nothing except my own ragged breathing.

  It takes longer than I thought it would to reach the branching corridor. I stop at the opening. There are no lights, and it is so dark down there that the hair rises on the back of my neck.

  At least in space there is an ambient light. Nothing is ever completely black. Not like this. If I walk into that darkness, I will effectively disappear.

  I try to remember. Did the lights come on as the cart approached an area or when the cart was already inside? I have a hunch the cart’s lights covered a lot. Maybe it was a motion sensor that made the lights come on.

  I take a deep breath of that wonderfully cool air, then stick my hand into that corridor.

  Behind me, I can hear the guide shouting. He doesn’t want me to do that much.

  I wave my arm around, and after a moment, rows and rows of lights flicker on. When one is triggered, the others get triggered as well. I wager they get triggered at some set distance.

  These lights have a rose tint to them. The area looks less black than a deep red, thanks to the lighting. That redness is oddly welcoming. I have a hunch we’re getting closer to the heart of these caves.

  I keep my arm in the corridor and make a point of moving it so that I can continue to see. Deep in the corridor—maybe seven meters ahead, maybe farther—I can see shapes. I’m not sure what exactly. They might simply be reflections on the shiny walls, although my mind reassembles those shapes into furniture or boxes or tables. All seem plausible. But for what I know, those shapes could also be debris—

  Or other bodies.

  I pull my arm out before I have a chance to reflect on what I’ve done. The lights remain on for several seconds before they flicker off. The farthest away disappear first—a nifty design that won’t leave anyone in darkness too long.

  My heart is pounding. It takes me a moment to catch my breath. I feel like I sometimes do when I stumble on a very important wreck.

  I wait until I make it back to the cart to say what I’m thinking.

  “We’re diving this.”

  Carmak nods. The guide looks scared. Mikk grins.

  “You saw something,” he says.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I saw a lot of somethings—and I want to know what they are.”

  ~ * ~

  SIX

  The problem is that of the people with the markers, I’m the only experienced diver. The others have had training, of course, or they wouldn’t have gone into the Room of Lost Souls when my father begged them to. But the Room is an empty place, without a lot of obvious dangers.

  None of the Six have the ability to dive a dangerous area. None of them know how to do an excavation, and I wouldn’t trust any of them—no matter how smart—to attempt one even in full gravity.

  By the time we have our nightly meeting, my mind is full of half-completed plans. I don’t tell the others what I’m thinking; it’s too early. But I have a hunch we’ll be here quite a while, excavating the areas where the archeologists died.

  I also have to set up an emergency evacuation plan. The longer we’re here, the more risk we run of getting discovered by the Empire. I talk to Ilona before we start the meeting. I have her lay out plans for a quick escape.

  Essentially everyone must head for the ships in the spaceport as quickly as possible. We’ll decide at the time (if there’s time) which equipment to take and which we trash. And Ilona and I must drum it into everyone’s brains that if an emergency evacuation gets called, we all leave immediately, no matter what we’re doing.

  “You think it’s stealth tech now, don’t you?” Ilona says as we finish moving chairs in the conference room.

  The hotel staff has covered the table with specialty dishes as well as fresh fruit, vegetables, and crudites. We are going to eat a Vaycehnese feast, something the city is famous for. Glasses of sparkling water line the sideboard behind me.

  I had the staff remove the wine the moment I arrived. I left all the beverages with caffeine and a single jug of local ale for the team members who cannot survive without their evening alcohol. But I make sure there isn’t enough for anyone to get drunk on.

  I wanted to limit the food, too—overeating is just as bad when you’re trying to do something athletic—but I couldn’t do that without mining the feast. I have to trust my team to have some sense.

  Ilona grabs one of the yellow-and-brown spotted apples that Vaycehn is known for, then sits on a chair near the head of the table.

  “Well?” she says to me. “Are you convinced?”

  “Let’s say I’m more convinced than I was,” I say. “There are a lot of strange things in those caves.”

  “Not all strange things in the universe come from stealth tech.” Roderick has just come in the door. He stops when he sees the food spread as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

  “I know that,” Ilona says with irritation. “But these are probably caused by it.”

  “Probably not,” I say.

  They both turn toward me.

  I smile and grab one of the spotted apples for myself. “But we are going to wait for the others before I tell you what we found.”

  The remaining members of the team straggle in. To my surprise, my team arrives before all the other teams are complete. My team looks tired— Carmak in particular, even though she didn’t do much physical work—and a few have wet hair from showers.

  Ivy’s hands are scrubbed raw. I didn’t realize how upset she is from that simple touch. I would think that an archeologist, used to working in soil, would be used to touching strange and possibly dangerous things.

  She sits across from Ilona. As the rest of the team filters in, they grab fruit or a slice of bread. A few pour themselves ale—although none of the ale drinkers are my divers or pilots. They’re used to remaining clean during a mission.

  The drinkers are primarily the Six, the historians, and a few of the scientists. I’m glad I’ve left only one jug of ale because it’s gone quickly. Rollo Kersting, one of the Six, pours the last dregs into a coffee cup and turns to me.

  “You should ask for more booze next time,” he says.

  Mikk stifles a laugh. Roderick turns his chair away so that his grin isn’t apparent.

  “I should,” I say in mock agreement.

  Kersting’s name fits him. He is rounder than the others, although he manages to stay in shape. His chubby cheeks and tufts of brown hair accent the roundness. His love of beer is the reason for his extra weight. Much of what we do on missions with Kersting is designed to keep him from that extra glass with dinner.

  Kersting doesn’t notice. He slides into the nearest chair and eyes the covered dishes.

  “We have a lot to report,” I say. “The hotel has thoughtfully provided dinner. Let’s serve ourselves, and then conduct the meeting over food.”

  I don’t have to tell people twice to grab plates. Fortunately the hotel was wise enough to repeat the same courses on both ends of the sideboard. Everyone dishes up platefuls of food, then returns to their seats. I take a small bit of each dish. Nothing is recognizable.

  I set my plate in front of the head of the table, but I don’t eat. Everyone else tucks in.

  I give the overall report of what’s below, spending quite a bit of time on the black walls and the strange lighting.

  “I wasn’t able to see more than the first death area,” I say, “but it looks like the Vaycehnese haven’t let anyone back there. There’s a lot to be excavated.”

  Tamaz lifts his head when he hears that. “We’re going to dive,” he says with a smile.

  “We are,” I say. “But we’re going to run this like any other mission. Mapping first.”

  “I would think there’s also a problem.” Kersting has finished his ale and taken a glass of sparkling water. “If the guide is right, then that stuff is in a stealth-tech area.”

  “Possible,” I say. “It’s something we’re going to have to work out.”

>   Because if it all is truly in a stealth-tech area, then I’m the only trained diver. The Six will have to dive with me, and that will be like taking tourists on a dangerous deep-space dive.

  “What I’m most interested in tonight are two things,” I say. “I want to know what the rest of you discovered in your researches today. And I also want to know if the scientists have any early thoughts on the black stuff. First the black stuff.”

  Bridge glances at the other scientists. He’s the one who spent the most time with it today, the only one who could really postulate anything.

  Still, I like the way he included the others, even if it was only with just a look.

  “It’s really preliminary,” he says. “We took a lot of samples, not just from the chamber they took us into, but from the area around the top, any edge that we could find. Then I went deeper into the chamber, away from the collapsed area, as far back as the cart pilot would let me go without your approval, and took some samples there.”

  “I’m assuming they’re different,” Stone says. A few of the others glare at her, but she ignores them. I may be in charge, but Stone is going to pretend she is.

  “That’s the surprising thing,” Bridge says. “With a cursory analysis from the equipment we brought with us, they’re not. It’s the same material—and here’s the curious thing—it’s the same age.”

  “Meaning what?” Mikk asks. He’s always the one who is the most impatient with science. He only wants to know how to use it, not what makes it work.

  “I have no idea. I’m not even sure what we’re dealing with,” Bridge says. “The components are unbelievably small and not something we’ve seen before.”

  “Infectious?” Ivy asks, rubbing her fingertips together.

  Bridge gives her such a look of annoyance that I wonder if she’s been asking him that question all day. I don’t know why she’s so worried. She wore gloves.

  “I don’t know if they’re infectious,” Bridge says. “Certainly not in the sense that we understand it. But something that small and powerful might do some harm if it gets into the lungs. I think until we know what we’re dealing with, we wear masks.”

  “Lovely,” Stone mutters.

  “Are the guides right?” I ask. “Is this a natural material?”

  “Not on any world I’ve been to,” says Bridge. “I’m guessing and we’re going to have to do studies, but I’m pretty sure these are man-made.”

  “That magically appear when a wall collapses?” Carmak asks. She seems to have perked up now that she’s eaten and had some coffee. She actually sounds intrigued now instead of overwhelmed like she had late this afternoon.

  “Yes, possibly,” Bridge says. “They formed quickly, reinforced the collapsed walls, and created the shaft where there was none. And then there’s the matter of the lights.”

  That catches my attention. The lights fascinated me from the moment we went below.

  “What about them?” Stone asks.

  “They form too. And they seem to respond to some kind of stimuli. In other words, they turn off when they’re not needed.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a motion sensor of some kind,” I say. I explain what happened in the corridor.

  “Built into that black stuff?” Mikk asks. “This stuff is sounding more and more amazing all the time.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?” Ilona says. “If the same people who built this built stealth tech, then of course this is amazing. Stealth tech is.”

  “Amazing in how fast it kills,” Roderick says.

  Both Mikk and Roderick, who saw a member of our team die in the Room of Lost Souls, loathe stealth tech. They’re here to conquer it, not learn everything they can about it.

  “It’s amazing how it works,” Ilona says primly, as if she disapproves of their attitude.

  I’m still not sure we’re dealing with stealth tech here, but I am sure that whoever made that black stuff had more scientific knowledge than we could pretend to have.

  Since our science is the best it has been in thousands of years and we don’t understand this stuff, that means it’s ancient science. The ancients knew so much more than we ever will. I constantly find myself in awe of them.

  “We’re here to find out whether or not those fourteen archeologists died in stealth-tech accidents,” I say. “Aside from my discovery today, did anyone learn more about that?”

  “It’s hard to find information,” says Gregory, one of the scientists. His narrow face is wan, and I wonder if he’s getting much sleep. He doesn’t like travel, although he’ll do it when he has to. He’s always the last to volunteer for an away mission and the first to volunteer to go home.

  “None of the officials want to talk to us.” He’s playing with his fork as he speaks, turning it upside down, banging the end, and then repeating the procedure. “They wouldn’t even point us to the scientific labs around here.”

  One of the other scientists, a slightly overweight man named Lentz, nods. “I finally gave up and went to the universities. Vaycehn has three, and they’re all well known. I wasn’t allowed to contact any of the science departments directly, although in the cafeteria, I ran into a scientist I knew from a few conferences. He says they’d love to meet with us, but Vaycehn has regulations about sharing potentially difficult information with outsiders, and so in order to have a formal discussion, we’d have to spend months going through channels.”

  “I hadn’t heard that part about channels until today,” Ilona says before I can ask her why we haven’t gotten all our permissions lined up.

  “What does ‘potentially difficult’ mean?” Bridge asks.

  Lentz smiles. “I asked that, too, and he answered me. Anything that could interfere with the tourist trade. The caves are the primary example because many of them are in the oldest areas of the city. People love to visit the ruins.”

  “One-point-two million visitors a year,” says Gregory, “and those are the official ones.”

  It seems he has gotten the tourist lecture too.

  “We’d be considered unofficial, even though we have a guide. We’re not here on vacation.” Gregory sounds surprised at that, as if he doesn’t understand the limiting of the word “tourist” to vacationer alone.

  “Was your friend able to tell you anything unofficial?” Bridge asks.

  Lentz’s grin grew. “Well, two old friends, you know, we’ll talk about anything.”

  My breath catches. Lentz got some information.

  “And we did. We talked about our friends, our colleagues, our research.”

  Stone sighs, as if she wants him to hurry to the point.

  He leans back in the chair and puts his hands behind his head. “My friend is researching the death holes.”

  Lentz has everyone’s attention now, and he seems to be enjoying it.

  “It seems that the Boss’s guess was right. Others have died here, all through Vaycehn’s history. In fact, one of the reasons the city center moved so much was to avoid the holes.”

  “There are that many?” Stone asks. “I thought there were only a few.”

  “All through the city’s history,” Lentz says, “areas just collapse. It’s not the weight of buildings or the ground above that causes it—although sometimes that happens too. But there are entire death hole areas in the Basin. That’s why some of the ruins are off-limits to tourists, and that’s why some of the history of the city is vague.”

  Bridge has steepled his fingers. I’m wishing I knew more detail about the five-thousand-year history of Vaycehn, like how often the city center moved and where.

  “He thinks there’s a scientific reason for all of this?” Carmak asks. Her eyes are sparkling. She’s not the same woman who was in the field this afternoon. “Besides a geologic one, I mean. Because the histories say that Vaycehn was initially built on unstable ground, and the oldest colonists had no way to know where the stable ground was. They searched until they found an area that could support their city.”

 
“Sounds plausible, doesn’t it?” Lentz says. “Until you remember that humans aren’t native to this place. The colonists had enough scientific skill to travel through space, then colonize this area and begin to farm it. You’d think they could figure out rudimentary geology.”

  “Science doesn’t always follow a linear path,” says Ilona, but she’s frowning. She’s thinking about this.

  Both Mikk and Stone are restless. But I’m fascinated. I have to force myself to eat some of the food on my plate. Not even the tastes are familiar, except on a basic level—bitter, sweet, salty, bitingly spicy. I pick at what’s before me, then push the plate away.

  “Well,” Lentz says with a small shrug, “whether or not you agree with the premise for his research doesn’t matter. He started the work because he didn’t believe his own country’s history.”

  I’m glad Lentz is the one describing this. Gregory doesn’t have the people skills, and Ilona is too invested in Vaycehnese life.

  “He dug through old records and found a lot of the basic stuff you’re talking about, Lucretia. He found the measurements, as well as stuff on whether the ground is stable, whether or not there’s bedrock, how deep the solid layer goes before they find ground water, all of that kind of thing.”

  ”And?” Mikk isn’t even trying to mask his irritation at the way the scientists present things.

  “And,” Lentz says, “the old studies confirm what he suspected.”

  ”Which is?” Mikk asks.

  ”That these death holes appear in solid ground. The catacomb of caves here were created by the phenomenon that creates the death holes. And it’s ongoing.”

  ”Like volcanic activity?” Stone asks. Now she’s intrigued.

  ”Not quite,” Lentz says. “Because there’s always a history of volcanic eruptions in the past.”

  ”Maybe a groundquake, then,” she says.