by Ilsa J. Bick
Everything in threes. Jase took a few steps toward the statue, and then turned to inspect the rest of the chamber. Jase saw that the tunnel they’d traveled came in from the side of the chamber, at a diagonal. The room was a rhomboid and studded at equal intervals with three curving stone pillars that arced from floor to ceiling. In each of the chamber’s four walls were three arched niches spaced at equal intervals, and within each were gold statues of women with peculiar diamond-shaped scales that ridged their eyes and long hair that spilled over their shoulders and breasts.
“An altar,” said Jase. He knelt on a step and his gloved fingers played over white smooth humps of material clinging to the rock. “Melted wax, like from candles. They probably did something religious here, prayers or something, before they left.”
“This way,” said Pahl, indicating a small passageway to the right of one statue. “There’s another room, much bigger.”
Once in the room, which was lit with a dim glow that seemed to have no source, they stood for several seconds, mouths open. Just staring.
“Oh,” said Jase, releasing his breath in an astonished gasp. His gaze traveled along the vaulted ceiling. The ceiling was painted a rich, dark blue and studded with glittering yellow stars. Like the sky at night, and there are two bigger than the rest, probably those binary stars. He saw at once that the paintings on the walls of the elliptical room—a dizzying array of red, blacks, and greens—were divided into three registers, with figures contained within intersecting rhomboids and trapezoids. Probably telling a story. Yet the story didn’t unfold in a straight line; the mural swirled along the walls. Jase spotted serpents, jagged bolts crashing through skies studded with blazing stars, the arcs of arrows curving in the air. The paintings felt organic and alive but suspended in time, in that instant between life and death every child knows but does not remember: the moment before he draws its first breath. Instinctively, Jase understood that the mural told a story of the hours of a single night. The story seemed to end with an image of a huge golden disc at the far side of the room.
Jase took another step into the chamber. That disc had to be a depiction of the rising sun—maybe the neutron star before it had become a neutron star. Just beneath the disc, he saw the woman-snake again, with its angry blood-red eyes, its shimmering green-scaled reptilian body. Those black wings.
He felt Pahl touch his arm. “Look,” said Pahl, pointing toward the center of the room.
Jase’s gaze followed. A red-stone, rhomboid slab stood in the center of the ellipse. Unlike the stone altar in the other room, however, this was carved with scrolls of ivy twisting around arcing columns incised out of the rock. Scattered on the floor were heaps of gold; dark wooden chests with latinum inlay and the rich green of jevonite; the crumbling remains of candles long since burned to nothing. And there was a body.
Jase and Pahl exchanged glances, and Jase saw Pahl’s throat work in a hard swallow. Without a word, they crept toward the slab and fanned their lights over the body. The skin of the dead man—and it had been a man, Jase saw (the king!)—was drawn tight as old black leather. As the skin had mummified, it curled and drew back; the lips were parted in a horrible rictus, the teeth startlingly white. As the soft tissues had decayed, the face had fallen in, and Jase stared into black, eyeless sockets. The cheeks were so taut the bones of the skull had torn through. Gold rings hung loosely on bone fingers; jeweled pendants and latinum chains dangled in the clefts between the dead man’s ribs where the flesh had rotted away, and the rich robes were reduced to shredded tatters. A deep, forest-green emerald glittered in the center of the dead king’s forehead.
So this is what his dad had been searching for. But was this what he and Pahl had been meant to find? No. Jase felt as if there was still more ...
“Over there,” said Pahl, echoing his thoughts. He nodded toward the far end of the chamber. “Through that arch.”
Unlike the burial chamber, this next room was pitch dark. The boys teetered on the threshold, and then stepped together into a thick, inky blackness. As if by unspoken agreement, they left their flashlights off for a moment and just absorbed the feel of the room. This room felt smaller, more dense. Jase had the impression of a diamond-shaped room, and his tricorder agreed. But the air was thick. Jase sniffed. Not musty but crowded, almost as if the darkness were filled with people jostling one another.
He felt Pahl at his elbow, searched for his friend’s eyes in the glow of their tricorders. “Do you feel it?”
Pahl nodded. “They’re here.”
They’re here. Without warning, all the hackles along the back of Jase’s neck rose. He shivered. Something was watching. Quickly, he flicked on his light; the blue-white halogen beam punched through the darkness. Jase whirled about on his heel, trying to catch whatever was there in the light. His beam cut the blackness. Stone walls. No paintings. Nothing else. No one.
No, thought Jase, there was something—someone—there. He felt it. Jase took a step back and then another, and then his heel caught. Crying out, Jase threw his arms up. His flashlight cartwheeled through the air. Jase fell back, hit something that rustled and chattered like icicles dangling from bare branches after an ice storm. Gasping, he rolled to one side, away from the sound, just as his nostrils were assailed with the musty odor of dust and decay.
Pahl’s torch flared to life, stabbed through the black, and Jase turned. Screamed.
The desiccated, mummified corpse of a boy slid out of the darkness.
Eyes bulging with horror, Jase scuttled away like a crab. He’d touched it; he’d fallen against it! And that clattering sound, his bones, the boy’s bones! Jase rolled to his knees, gasping. His skin was clammy with icy sweat.
Calm down, he’s dead, he can’t hurt you. Jase tried corralling his addled wits. Now that he was further away, he saw the body was slumped against a wooden triangular stand of some kind. Jase stood slowly, gulping air, heart hammering in his chest. There was movement by his elbow, and he almost screamed.
Pahl handed Jase the flashlight he’d dropped. “Look at his face,” Pahl whispered.
Despite his fright, Jase leaned forward. He frowned. “What is that?”
Pahl knelt by the dead boy’s side. He reached forward, his fingers trailing along the contours of something that glinted and shone. “It’s a mask.”
“Don’t touch it!” Jase cried. Instinctively, he knew: danger. “Leave it alone!”
“Why?” Pahl continued to caress the mask. His movements were slow, languid. “It’s harmless. It’s ...” Without warning, Pahl plucked the mask from the corpse’s face.
“No!” Jase cried, too late.
Suddenly, the room was suffused with a soft, silver light. There was a hum, a sense of expectancy. No, no, what now, what’s happening? Jase jerked open his tricorder.
“Pahl’s, something switched on. Another power source. Somewhere, outside this room, I don’t know, and now there’s an energy surge.” Jase jerked his head up. “Pahl, Pahl, let’s just go now. We’ve seen enough, we’ve seen ...”
His voice died in his throat. He felt the same thick congestion in the air, only more now than before. Like the bodies of people all pressed together in a small room, all breathing the same air. The energy surge—Jase stared at his readings—like a door opening somewhere, letting something out, and it started when Pahl touched the mask, when he took the mask. Jase stared wildly into the silvery glow. The air was thick, and as he stared, the air changed colors. The air trembled and writhed, and then the air uncoiled, coalescing into shapes, things that lashed the air like dragons. Like snakes.
“Pahl!” Jase’s voice came in a thin, high whisper. “Pahl, Pahl, do you see them? Do you see?”
“Yes.” But not a word: more like the hiss of some serpent. Pahl’s ice-blue eyes started from his skull, but he wasn’t looking at Jase. He was staring into the roiling air. “Yessss, yesssss.”
And then, before Jase could move, Pahl placed the mask over his own features.
&nbs
p; “No!” Jase cried, starting forward. “Pahl, stop!”
Pahl opened his mouth and let out a long, loud wail. Jase couldn’t help it; he was so frightened, a cry jerked from his throat, too. Pahl’s scream echoed like the cry of a bat flinging itself from one dark corner to the next. His scream was inarticulate, formless: a never-ending wave of sound that went on and on, crashing through the darkness.
Jase’s mind gabbled in panic: no, no, no! He had to get that mask off Pahl’s face; he had to get them out of there!
“Pahl!” Lunging forward, Jase clawed at Pahl’s face. His fingers grazed the silvery metal, and it was like he’d touched a live circuit. A sudden, hard shock rippled down his hand and shivered through his arm. He flew back, his body twisting through the crowded, thick air. He crashed against the wooden stand, and the ancient wood, rotted with age and time, erupted, exploded from within, rising in a cloud of dust and debris. Jase felt the patter of wood against his skin, heard it rain upon the rock like hail. A brackish taste filled his mouth, and he spat out a gob of saliva and blood. He groaned. Every nerve ending of his body felt on fire. He tried moving, and electric shocks tingled through his limbs.
He shouldn’t have left the biosphere; he should have listened to his dad. Dad, help us, please help us!
“Pahl,” he moaned. His fingers scrabbled uselessly over cool red stone and bits of decayed wood. “Pahl.”
But Pahl was quiet now. Shuddering, Jase lay with his cheek pressed against rock, felt the bite of grit against his skin. He saw that Pahl was shaking; his friend’s hands were twisted, claw-like. No. Jase felt the weight of the air heavy along his body, pressing him into the stone until he couldn’t breathe. No, no, nonononono ...
And now, in the gathering darkness, he heard them: their voices shrill and greedy: Ours, our time, our time, ours, ours!
“Pahl,” he said, his voice a dry croak. “Pahl, help me!”
Slowly, Pahl turned, and then Jase saw Pahl’s eyes shining and luminous, glowing with all the hard, cold beauty of two blue stars. Fear gripped Jase by the throat. His voice came out in a strangled squeak of a whisper. “Pahl?”
“No.” Pahl’s voice was stony, the tone flat. Alien. “I’m not Pahl. Not now.”
Horror washed through Jase and left him weak. “Please,” he said, “please.” And in his mind: Dad, Dad, help us!
“Are you afraid?” Pahl—It—took a step then two toward Jase. The air coiled around Pahl—It. The air gathered, bunched. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Jase wailed. Dad, Dad! “Yes, yes, yesyesyes!”
“Yes,” It said, an echo, that serpent’s hiss. “Yesssyesss-yesss.” A pause. “You should be.”
And, a second later, Jase Garrett began to scream.
Chapter 31
“An alarm?” Chen-Mai asked. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” said Leahru-Mar, disliking the way the other man crowded him. “I missed it on standard scans. You’d just never think to look.” “Why did you?”
“There was a faint distortion of the magnetic field localized to an area around that old lake, and after I saw the power emanations, I tried to figure out what that meant. I read that there’s a power source that’s been switched on, and an alarm that’s gone off. The alarm’s weak, on a very narrow band. In fact, it’s much closer to old infrared or laser-propagation waves than subspace channels.”
“Infrared?” Chen-Mai scowled. “That’s not old, that’s ancient.”
“Well, whatever it is, someone’s tripped an alarm. Either that, or someone’s broadcasting a signal, probably automated.”
“A signal. To whom?”
Mar’s frills canted at a right angle to his nose before settling back down. “I’m not a communications expert; I just pilot ships. If that is a signal, I’m not sure it will pierce the magnetic interference blanketing the planet. Probably not.”
“But if it does get through, then the Cardassians will know we’re here,” Chen-Mai fumed. “The Cardassians will be all over this planet!”
Mar waited him out. Privately, he thought the alarm wasn’t a huge concern. Likely the Cardassian patrols wouldn’t pick up a thing until they swung back through the system. If the Cardassians stuck to their schedule, they were a little under a day away. By then, they—he, Pahl, and Chen-Mai (the Betazoid and his boy were on their own)—planned to be very gone.
“Well, how long has the power signature been there?” asked Chen-Mai.
“An hour, maybe a little longer. The sensor grid showed red about two hours ago, but when I tried to reconfirm, the signal vanished. I didn’t think any more about it. Besides, it read a little like a magma disturbance, about two kilometers down.”
“Except this planet’s dead, Mar. It hasn’t been geologically active for centuries.”
“There’s always some residua,” said Mar, defensively. “Even with dead moons, there are subterranean shifts.”
The cast of Chen-Mai’s skin was always sallow, but now the blood rushed to his face, mottling his skin with ugly splotches, like bruises on a yellow pear. “But that doesn’t explain how you could miss a signal that indicates periodicity, and a power source!”
Indignant, frills twitching, Mar drew himself up. He might be a Leahru, clan of the Weaker Brother, but he wasn’t an Efram, or anyone’s Naxeran punching bag. “You try sitting here, hour after hour and day after day, sifting through sensor garbage! I don’t know how I missed it. You can bully me all you want, but the simple fact remains that I found it now, and we’ve got to decide what to do!”
“What to do?” Chen-Mai’s jaws clamped down so hard, Mar heard the click of his teeth. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” He pushed his way forward again and jabbed his finger square upon a pulsating green blip on the sensor display. “That is a power signature. It means that Kaldarren’s found the portal!”
“Well,” said Mar, slightly mollified now that Chen-Mai was concentrating his wrath on the Betazoid, “that would explain the alarm, certainly. Except for something reportedly so invaluable, to arm it with an alarm that’s essentially a laser-propagation wave doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s old. It’s ancient. We’re talking thousands of years. Maybe this passed as state of the art back then. Or maybe the Cardassians didn’t have anything better, or don’t know about it,” said Chen-Mai. “I don’t know. But I do know this. There’s a source powering something, and now there’s a signal that might be strong enough to pierce the magnetic blanket that’s all over the wretched planet, and to think that it’s been there, right there, under our noses the whole time!”
“Well,” said Mar, trying to temporize, “not exactly under our noses ...”
“Shut up, Mar. You puling Naxerans are all alike. Just shut up and let me think.”
Mar lapsed into silence. He didn’t distrust Ven Kaldarren the way Chen-Mai did. The xenoarchaeologist was just naïve. Well, actually, he was stupid. Kaldarren trusted Chen-Mai to keep his part of the bargain: share and share alike. Stupid. Well, the Betazoid had no one to blame but himself. He certainly wasn’t going to charge to Kaldarren’s rescue. Mar wasn’t the kind of man who would voluntarily jump into the fray. But, puling Naxeran, eh? True, he was Leahru; G’Doks had all the power. As Leahru, Mar knew all about the fine art of treading lightly around people in power. The equation was simple. Chen-Mai had the power; Mar did not. All right, so maybe that made him puling in Chen-Mai’s calculus.
And Kaldarren? If he’d been Naxeran, Kaldarren would’ve been Efram: a member of the servant class. If Kaldarren were stupid enough to trust Chen-Mai, he’d have probably wound up getting himself killed sooner or later—if not by Chen-Mai then by someone equally vile. Briefly, Mar debated about whether or not he might be able to do something for Kaldarren’s son, and then decided he couldn’t. Actually, shouldn’t: It wasn’t as if the boy could be counted on to keep his mouth shut, and what would they do with him afterward anyway?
Which left him with another problem. Mar’s sulfurous eyes slid sidewa
ys. Chen-Mai was pacing and muttering. If Chen-Mai had always intended to eliminate Kaldarren, he’d most certainly have decided that sharing whatever booty there was with him wasn’t very desirable either. Chen-Mai was a good enough pilot; he’d be able to get the shuttle off this rock. Maneuvering around Cardassians was another matter, and maybe Chen-Mai wouldn’t want to take that much of a risk. On the other hand, he might—if the rewards were big enough. Now that an alarm had sounded, Mar thought the rewards would be very big indeed. Otherwise, why bother with an alarm? So his problem: Who would get to whom first?
Chen-Mai broke into Mar’s thoughts. “All right. Here’s what we do. We’re going to assume the Cardassians will pick up that signal sooner rather than later. Now, Kaldarren took one skimmer, right? Well, we’ll take the other. If Kaldarren’s found the portal—and I’ll just bet he has—we assume he’s found a tomb, too. There’ll be so much treasure we’ll need two skimmers. And don’t forget a tricorder. We want to make sure to download the specs on the portal, assuming Kaldarren hasn’t already done us the favor. Phasers, too.”
“Phasers are a given. And if Kaldarren objects?”
“Two skimmers, two pilots. Two phasers. Do the math, Mar.”
“All right, then. Let’s talk math.” Mar tapped the sensor display. “There’re three life signs down there. What about the boys? No.” He put a finger to his lips and felt the fine tips of his frills brush his skin. “I misspoke. There’s no question about Pahl. So about the other boy?”
Chen-Mai shrugged. “What about him?”
Kaldarren’s fingers were shaking so badly he had trouble keying in the correct sequence to reverse polarity on his tricorder. After that first wrenching mind-scream, Kaldarren had been so disoriented he hadn’t known which way to go. Finally, he remembered his tricorder and then he’d seen them: two life-forms beneath the surface. The boys. Then he’d seen the power signature, and Kaldarren knew. The boys had found the portal—or something.