Resurgence hu-5

by Charles Sheffield

  Not like the sniveling wretch in the seat behind her. Claudius had a special suit, one adapted to his strange helical physiology. Insisting that he was dying, he had refused to wind himself into it on the Have-It-All, until Nenda brought Archimedes into the picture.

  The Zardalu had raised himself to his full height and glared down on Claudius with open maw, while Nenda said to Claudius, “I’ve told him he can eat whatever of you he can still see one minute from now.”

  That had taken care of the suit problem, but it hadn’t ended the moaning and groaning.

  “Such discomfort! Such pain! Such anguish! That a distinguished being of noble lineage should be subjected to treatment like this . . . Never should I have agreed to suffer such degradation. Never should I have left the haven of Pleasureworld!”

  With his suit open Nenda was trying to talk pheromonally to Atvar H’sial, but doing it while Claudius made such a racket in the back seat made Louis’s head ache. Claudius was loud, and he was shrill.

  Finally Nenda set the controls to automatic and turned in his seat to face the Polypheme. He said pleasantly, “We are cruisin’ at seventeen thousand meters. The temperature is a hundred and eleven below. There’s hardly any air outside, and nothin’ but solid ice beneath us. The seat you are in, Claudius, has an ejector mechanism, and it’s controlled from the pilot’s seat. If you don’t stop jabbering, I’m goin’ to use it.”

  Sinara, sitting next to Claudius, said, “Louis, do it! Do it!”

  “I may. My finger’s on the button. One more squeak and that’s it.”

  Claudius subsided. At last Louis was able to concentrate on the scene below and could again send pheromonal messages about it to Atvar H’sial.

  “We might as well go the distance and make a full circuit of the planet, but I’m not optimistic. The cold hemisphere is as bleak and bare as Archimedes said. The sun provides a fair amount of light, but only a dribble of heat.”

  “High civilizations have thrived on worlds colder than this.”

  “They have. I suspect they did here. But the Marglotta were right to be scared enough to call out for help. Something came along, and it zapped them. Question is, is it on the surface now, still doin’ its thing?”

  “I would suggest that whatever malevolent influence was present, it is, for the time being at least, somewhat inactive. I assume that the suit signals from the surface continue to indicate living occupants?”

  “They do, though Ben Blesh ain’t in good shape. Hold on a minute, At. We’re approaching one of the major boundaries. We are still on the daylight side, but we’re near the edge of the cold hemisphere. I think I see open water below us—an’ greenery. Maybe I ought to take us down as soon as we get where the surface is a bit warmer. If we’re going to do that we should act pretty quick, because in another hour of flight we’ll be at the day/night divider.”

  “Take us lower, Louis, but land only if you observe one of the structures noted by Archimedes as possibly indicative of a city or an industrial site.”

  “I don’t need to look for one. We took every location that Archimedes spotted and stuck ’em in the pinnace navigation system. There’s a place about two hundred kilometers ahead and almost on our flight path.”

  “Then we should indeed take a look. And if you are able to descend to the surface so that we may exit this craft, I personally will, in truth, actually be able to look with my own sensory apparatus.”

  “An open suit?”

  “Unless you note clear evidence of danger, that is a risk which I am willing to undertake.”

  The comment confirmed it in Louis’s mind. Atvar H’sial was as averse to unnecessary risks as he was, but she was going stir crazy. They had been cooped up in a confined environment for far too long—ever since the arrival of the summons to Miranda when they were working on Xerarchos. That felt like a million years ago.

  “Hold it in a bit longer, At. I’ll have us on the ground in twenty minutes.”

  Having said that, Nenda was still not ready to take risks. He reduced their height and speed in the final ten kilometers, and when their target was in sight he flew a slow circle all around it.

  What he could see was unimpressive. Seven broad gray strips—roads, or rail lines—converged. Where they met, and for about half a kilometer around that point, a narrower grid of intersecting strips formed a ruled pattern on the surface. All the gray strips were dotted with dark, rectangular objects, scores of them. They looked to Louis to be about the right size to be ground cars, but he didn’t want to tilt Atvar H’sial’s opinion before she’d had a chance to make her own assessment. Louis could see no sign of buildings or of people. The only thing that moved in the whole silent scene was some kind of flag or banner, fluttering in the breeze at the top of a tall metallic spindle marking the meeting of the seven roads.

  “See anything to worry about?” Louis said over his shoulder to Sinara and Claudius; and, at her silence and the Polypheme’s disdainful grunt, “Right, then. I’m taking us in.”

  He dropped the pinnace onto one of the wide gray roads, about fifty meters from the central flagpole. When after a few minutes of silent observation neither the pinnace’s instruments nor its occupants saw or heard anything, Louis opened the hatch and stepped outside.

  The final descent had been made with all suits closed, but his suit’s monitors showed an acceptable atmosphere and no ambient toxins. He waved to Atvar H’sial and said over his suit radio, “All right. Anybody who wants out for a while should do it now.”

  Sinara was by his side in a moment, the faceplate of her suit already open. Atvar H’sial followed more slowly, setting in motion the complex set of servo-mechanisms that rolled back the head part of her suit. The two-meter fronded antennas slowly unfolded, while the twin yellow trumpetlike horns below them turned to take in the scene ahead. The pheromones that wafted across to Louis were wordless, but they expressed pure bliss.

  Louis set out toward the nearest of the blocky objects that stood on the road. Sinara danced on ahead of him. By the time he reached her she had already opened a door at its front.

  “It’s a vehicle, Louis.” For once her voice was not bubbling over with enthusiasm. “Marglottas inside it—dead. Just like the ones in the ship on Miranda. But it’s the same as there, not a sign of what killed them. They look as if they should be perfectly fine.”

  Atvar H’sial had moved more slowly along the road, making her own careful observations. She said as she came to their side, “The resemblance between these deaths and the deaths on the ship that came to Miranda go beyond the superficial. When first we had an opportunity to examine those bodies, we all remarked on their exceptionally well-preserved condition. They were dead, but in a sense, like these creatures, they were more than dead.”

  “At, I don’t know about Cecropians, but with humans being dead is sorta like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren’t. There’s no in-between.”

  “I will define my terms more closely. When a creature dies, be it human, Cecropian, or any other form known to me, the life of the organism, considered as a single unit, ends. However, this does not at once imply the death of the multitude of microorganisms that reside within it or upon it. Their activity continues for a period, largely unaffected by the fate of their host. Were you, Louis, to expire at this very moment, the bacteria of your intestinal tract, to name but one example, would persist in their activity. When you die your body will begin to rot, to putrefy, to bloat, and to transform itself into a mass of reeking and putrescent flesh.”

  “Thanks, At. It’s real nice to have somethin’ to look forward to.”

  “The same would be just as true of me, Louis, or of your female here.”

  Louis had been summarizing Atvar H’sial’s thoughts in words for Sinara’s benefit. He edited the final phrase—she had enough ideas on that already.

  The Cecropian continued, “Yet this process of internal decay had not happened to the Marglotta who arrived at Miranda, nor to the Chism Polyphem
e who flew that ship. Nor is it true for these beings.” Atvar H’sial waved a paw. “In order for the mummification which we observe here to occur, all life processes, external and internal, at the total organism level and at the bacterial level, must cease together. All die.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “I do not know. But I am able to confirm that it is true. My ultrasonics permit me to look inside these bodies. No form of life, even at the microbial level, is present within them. But at the same time, plant life here flourishes.” The Cecropian pointed to the low greenery that separated the gray roads, and to the ugly gray cactus growths that popped up here and there among it.

  “D’you think it’s like this all over Marglot?”

  “That remains to be confirmed. First, however, we should determine if what we find for the Marglotta in this car is equally true for those in the city.”

  Louis stared at Atvar H’sial, then turned to survey everything around them. Far off in the direction of the day-night terminator, a line of hills jutted on the skyline. A ragged edge to their outline suggested more ugly cactus growths, encouraged to enormity by the higher altitude. Everywhere else displayed the level gray of roads or a tangled mass of green that clung close to the ground.

  “Before we can see how Marglotta do in a city, At, first we gotta find us one.”

  “But we have found one already. It is here.” The trumpet horns on Atvar H’sial’s head swiveled around. “The Marglotta, like many beings of good sense, chose to preserve the surface of their world for other purposes. The city is underground, and it is all around us. In certain places, my ultrasonics have detected the presence of large cavities or caverns. Our task is merely to discover some access point. Logically, one or more should be present close to the city center, where the main roads converge.”

  The Cecropian turned and made her way steadily back toward the flagpole. Louis trailed after her. This was the other side of the story. Now it was At who could see what they needed, while Louis and Sinara were blind. Before you started to feel sorry for a Cecropian, you had to remember that there was more than one way to define “vision.”

  When they reached the pinnace, Claudius was standing outside it. Either he had recovered from his hangover or his greed was stronger than his discomfort.

  “Fifty percent,” he said as they approached. “Remember? Fifty percent of everything we find.”

  “Right.” Louis was watching Atvar H’sial, who seemed to have discovered some kind of downward ramp by one of the major roads. “I think we just found a way to explore underground. You can go first and earn your fifty percent.”

  He knew there was little chance of that. Polyphemes were as cowardly as they were mendacious. He left Claudius behind and followed Atvar H’sial down what began as a steep ramp and rapidly became a dark tunnel.

  “Black as a Rumbleside scad merchant’s heart. Hope you can see your way in here.”

  “I can indeed see, most excellently. I judge this to be the entrance to some municipal building rather than to a residence. That would be consistent with its size and central location.”

  “So unless everybody works in the dark—I’ve known whole governments seemed to operate like that—there oughta be a way to turn on lights.”

  They were approaching a wide pair of doors. Atvar H’sial swung them open. Louis, using the light of his suit and of Sinara’s who was walking beside him, searched the wall for some kind of switch or bar. He saw nothing, and went on, “Guess we’ll have to rely on you, At.”

  But as he spoke, the darkness ahead was slowly relieved. Light, dim at first, bled in from fixtures in a low ceiling. Atvar H’sial was forced to stoop far over, while even Nenda had to dip his head.

  “Motion sensitive.” Sinara waved her hand, and the lights brightened. “Smart design. When everyone leaves, the lights fade automatically.”

  “Or when everything stops movin’. Nobody’s left this place for quite a while.”

  They had entered one end of a huge room. Its low ceiling, although ample in height for the diminutive Marglotta, made the other walls seem even farther away. Big machines of unfamiliar design and purpose stood in long rows, connected to each other in complex ways. One or two Marglotta stood by, apparently responsible for each production line.

  “Dead.” Sinara spoke in a whisper. “Hundreds of them, and every one dead.”

  “But that is not the most striking element of this scene.” Atvar H’sial, forced to bend far over and walk on all her legs, was almost too wide to fit between the rows of machines. She crept forward along one of the aisles. “Observe the postures. Every one died while engaged in routine operations. They had no warning, no suggestion of what was coming.”

  Louis examined each Marglotta as he passed down the aisle behind Atvar H’sial. One studied some kind of read-out, another was employing a tool with a clawed end. A third stooped at the end of one machine, in the act of picking up or putting down an empty black container. He, Sinara, and Atvar H’sial had entered a busy factory, full of life and action, frozen at a single moment of time.

  “You’re right, At. All without warning, and all at once.” Louis halted. “Unless you think there’s more to learn in some other room, I’d say we’re about done in here.”

  “I agree.” Atvar H’sial could find no space big enough for her to turn, so she was forced to retreat backwards along the aisle. “What they were producing is unclear, but that knowledge would probably tell us little or nothing. Also, although this machinery appears of sophisticated design and enjoys a high level of automation, I see nothing that we might wish to remove for our own commercial advantage. These machines confirm the notion that Marglot supported a civilization with good technological capability. However, when disaster came, that technology was unable to save the life of even a single Marglotta.”

  Sinara had been unusually quiet. Now she said, “Louis, are we in danger?”

  “Not right this minute. Whatever did for the Marglotta here has been and gone. But we’d better be real careful when we go other places. I’m ’specially thinkin’ about those bursts of radio noise we picked up from orbit. They sounded like gibberish, but nothing I’ve ever seen in nature produces that kind of output.”

  “One of those sources is close to E.C. Tally’s location. He has probably had dealings with them. Won’t we need to do the same?”

  “Yeah. That’s a real comfort. We should get rollin’. Tally’s across at the opposite edge of the warm side. We’ll take a look as we go, an’ see if there’s anything interesting at lower altitude that Archimedes didn’t spot from orbit.”

  * * *

  What they saw was mostly nothing at all. Louis hadn’t thought through the tangled geometry of Marglot. Twenty minutes after they were airborne they were still flying over the warm hemisphere, but they were coming to the day/night dividing line. Louis stared down as twilight faded to night and the landscape below became a pale shadow. It might be warm down there, even hot, but soon it would be lit only by the “moonlight” of the sun’s radiation reflected from the giant world of M-2.

  He could just about make out the difference between land and water. The image intensifiers on board the pinnace had not been designed for this kind of work, and they did little better than human eyes. Claudius’s great single optic would probably see more, but the Polypheme remained at his most uncooperative. Despite Nenda’s assurance that nothing valuable had been found in the underground Marglotta factory, it was obvious that Claudius did not believe him.

  As the pinnace sped around the curve of the planet toward the Hot Pole, clouds covered everything below. Somehow that lessened the level of frustration. Seeing nothing because you were not trying was better than peering, guessing, and cursing.

  “I receive suit signals,” Atvar H’sial said suddenly. “Six of them, and all derive from the same location.”

  “Yeah. I guess they can’t go any place. We’re pretty close to passing over the Hot Pole. Halfway to Tally.”
<
br />   “Will they be able to detect our presence?”

  “I don’t think so. They’ll be sending like mad, but not able to hear much. But how the blazes did Tally get so far away from all the others?”

  “I would like the answer to a different question: What strange skill or luck brought them here ahead of us, when there is no sign of a ship, either on the surface or up in orbit?”

  “I’m tellin’ you, At, Marglot is one weird place. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the whole place had to be a Builder artifact itself. Four poles, and a bigger magnetic field than any planet has a right to.”

  “You are making an unwarranted assumption, namely, that Marglot is not an artifact. Since we arrived here, I have been of the opinion that Marglot either is itself a Builder artifact, or it is intimately related to one.”

  “How come you never bothered to tell me that before?”

  “To encumber another with an unlikely theory when all substantial evidence for it is lacking is not the Cecropian way.”

  “You think you got evidence now?”

  “I do. We possess an additional fact which tilts the balance in favor of speaking. The Marglotta who went to Miranda feared that they were in danger because of possible Builder action. Now the Marglotta, or at least those on this planet, are all dead.”

  “But we’re not. How do you explain that?”

  “Again, I had formed an idea too vague to offer as hypothesis. However, since you ask: it is my suspicion that we have arrived here in a time interval that separates two phases of activity. The first phase led to the rapid or instantaneous extinction of animal life on Marglot.”