by John Ringo
Soft as they were, the Indowy's footsteps still echoed in the right-angular chamber. They raised low clouds of the thick dust that had lain undisturbed for untold millennia. Creepy, he thought, as he turned the next corner. For several minutes Aelool had to stop as the dust caused an uncontrollable fit of sneezing.
Here there were a series of battle scenes. Again, the central Posleen figure remained disarmed. As those scenes progressed, it appeared that the battle had gone against him. By the last, he was surrounded by other kessentai, all of whom seemed to be threatening him with their weapons.
After the next corner, there was more writing than carved figures. That one distinctive kessentai was there, though, and he was surrounded by others. These last, however, did not have their boma blades drawn. The central kessentai's head hung down, as if in shame or fear. At the next to last panel, Aelool saw, the kessentai's upper limbs were bound together, with another rope around its neck. At the last, he was led away by others, now with their blades drawn.
Aelool stopped to admire that last panel. Whoever the long-ago Posleen artist had been, and however crude or stylized his technique, he captured in the droop of the bound kessentai's crest, in the downcast eyes and the limp claws, in the stumbling gait and in the impression a pulling rope made on his neck, the absolute essence of hopeless despair.
He stood there a few moments, admiring, then, as he turned away, said, "No human or Indowy ever did better."
The last set of panels told a different story, a horror story. First, it seemed, that despairing kessentai's walking limbs were broken with great bars. In the next, its agony, writ on the stone, became palpable as its head seemed almost to writhe above as the torso, laying in the dust. After that, two other kessentai displayed dangling orbs from their claws. Aelool had to do a double take before he saw that the suffering kessentai's eyes were missing from the carving. Then he was eviscerated, his intestines carved plainly from his stomach. They draped along the ground in the following panel, as the others carried him to a platform of some kind.
Aelool discovered what kind of platform had been memorialized in the next panel, as stone flames rose around the tortured and dying God-king.
There the bas reliefs ended, though there were another two with more of the untranslatable writing. It was just as well. Aelool wasn't sure he could take any more of the carved, stone-immortalized agony.
How bizarre, the Indowy thought, as he finished his progress toward the tenar portal. The Posleen are a hard and a harsh people, yes . . . but there is nothing in the records to indicate the kind of wanton cruelty displayed in those panels. What kind of crimes must that kessentai have committed to justify that? Aelool snorted. Hah! There are no possible crimes that might justify such an atrocity. And yet they seemed to have done it. Why else make the effort to memorialize it?
Having no answer, Aelool continued on to the portal. It was right where Guano had said it would be, right where his own internal sense of direction told him it would be.
Moving the light by shifting his head, the Indowy searched for the panel that Guano said would conceal the hand crank. He found it and, when he forced it open against the inertia of the ages, was surprised to discover that there was no dust therein. Carefully, even so, Aelool withdrew the crank and examined it.
"Nothing unusual," he said to himself. "Just like a primitive hand drill."
A few experimental twists of the crank took up the slack. But even after that, Aelool hardly needed to use his entire strength to turn the thing. On the other hand, it took ninety-three turns—he counted—before the tenar portal had opened so much as a human inch. By the time he'd opened the thing enough to admit the largest member of the party, Guano . . .
"You know," Guano said through his AS, "I've never actually been inside the pyramid of a high lord before."
Dwyer looked at the kessentai quizzically.
"I was not particularly high born," the Posleen explained. "In time, my own followers would have built me a pyramid, but it would have been a much smaller affair. Much less ornate."
"Speaking of ornate," Aelool said, from where he lay panting in the dust, "if you follow the ramp down you'll see some things I never thought to see as the fruit of any of your people."
"What things?" Guano asked.
"Carvings . . . that seem to tell a story."
"This I must see," announced Imam al Rashid, taking the lead ahead of Guano and proceeding down the dusty path.
It was nearly an hour before Guano and al Rashid returned. When they did, both were gesturing forcefully and arguing vociferously.
"It is the tale of a Rasul, a prophet of Allah," the imam insisted.
"We don't know that," Guano said, through his AS. "All we know is that someone was killed in a horrible way, untold millennia past. Might have been a prophet, might have been a Messiah, might have been a common . . . well, no, not a common criminal, based on how he was killed."
"I'd thought you would have been able to read the inscriptions," Aelool said.
"No," Guano shook his head. "It is the same writing as High Posleen, but it isn't the same language."
"Your AS?" the Indowy asked.
"Oh, it knows, all right. But it says it can't translate it, nor even give me a key."
"A Prophet," al Rashid insisted again.
"A mystery," Guano countered.
USS Salem
"It's in Aldenata," Sally said, later, when all were safely back aboard ship, "but written in Posleen. And, no, while I can recognize it, I can't translate it."
She made her judgment based on recordings of the interior of the pyramid. Back on the planet, there'd been some discussion as to whether the landing party should detach and bring the panels back. Ultimately al Rashid had nixed that.
"Leave them," the imam had said. "Seal the place up again. Eventually, parties of real archeologists will come, equipped to do a proper excavation and to analyze everything in its proper relationship to everything else. The most we can do, and the most we should, is record the thing."
To this, Dwyer had agreed. In fact, the only one to disagree had been Aelool, and his reasons had little to do with preserving the heritage of the ages.
"You mean you'll want me to close the place again and then slide through inch-thick dried shit again and . . ."
"You can always be spaced, Indowy," Dwyer had answered. Which observation pretty had much ended Aelool's objections.
"Before we depart the system," Guano said, "I'd like one more chance to explore the pyramid. If we're not in a hurry, I mean."
"We're not," Dwyer answered. "Sally's still analyzing the traces of the Posleen ship that preceded us. It will be a while before she's ready to follow."
Sally, the woman, looked suspiciously at the Posleen. Why should you need to do that? Looking for a weapon to use against us?
"You can have all day tomorrow," the Jesuit said. "Von Altishofen; provide escort."
"Yes, Father," the Wachtmeister said. "Bourdon and Lorgus will be your men, Reverend."
"And Aelool," the priest added. "You'll go with them and seal the pyramid up."
"Why don't you agree with al Rashid, Guano?" Aelool asked as the pinnace descended through the atmosphere.
"About that kessentai being a prophet?"
"Yes, that."
"It's not so much that I disagree as that . . ."
"Yes?" the Indowy prodded.
"Well . . . for one thing, a carved stone picture is not proof of anything. But for the other . . . I'm just not qualified to say. It's theology . . . above my echelon."
"Who could say then?"
"I don't know for sure . . . Father Dwyer . . . maybe his Pope. Maybe the Dalai Lama. Maybe my AS if it would say. Not me."
Hemaleen V
"Do you want us to come in with you, Reverend?" Bourdon asked once they'd reached the ramp that led to the pit they'd dug down to the top platform of the pyramid.
"No," the Posleen shook his head. "I'll be fine." Guano wore the q
uarantine suit and helmet Sally had made up for him in the forge. At least I won't be down here long enough this time to have to crap on myself.
"As you will, then. If you need us, call."
Smiling thanks might have been a good idea, except that from a Posleen a smile looked even more menacing than from a human. Guano bowed his head, gratefully, then turned down the ramp, down the steps and then entered the pyramid through the tenar gate.
One thing the humans had not bothered with was the previous occupant's tenar. It was sitting, in its storage alcove, but so obviously out of power that there seemed little sense in trying to recover it. Nor did the ship have a good way to produce a replacement power unit, even though it was itself powered by anti-matter. There was some question of the efficacy and safety of trying to tap the main containment unit merely to, in Sally's words, "Recharge an old, worn out, and probably defective battery."
Still, Guano patted the thing as he passed it, almost as if it were alive. Some things wear out, he thought. Some things never do. And 'We'll go no more a roving, so late into the night.' Odd how that poem from Divinity School stuck with me.
Though they'd left the site pretty much undisturbed otherwise, von Altishofen's crew, sick of sneezing, had removed the dust from the floor. It remained of course; no telling what some future archeologist might do with the DNA-cognate trapped therein. But it remained in piles, set off to one side, where footsteps would not raise it.
Guano made his way down the ramp, past the point the Indowy had first entered. There were no barriers to bar his way, as he was already inside the thing's ancient defenses. He stopped along the way several times to peer at certain of the bas reliefs, in part to appreciate the carving and in part to try to determine just how it was done. Reverently, with reverence for the long lost artist, he lightly touched a few spots with his gloved hand.
I would I had known you, friend, in my time, so that your art could glorify God.
The carved panels extended much further down than the chute by which the Indowy had entered the pyramid. These had been seen before, and recordings of them were in Sally's data banks and the AS. They were of happier scenes and times, though still all had that one magnificent stylized kessentai at their center.
I wish I knew. I wish I knew if al Rashid is right. But I doubt that I ever shall, in this life . . . and I would not be the bearer of a false prophecy, nor the messenger of a false prophet.
At the base of the winding ramp, Guano stopped for a moment, to orient himself. Over there, I think. Over there is where that old Great One's personal quarters would have been. There, if anywhere, I will find what I am looking for.
This door, about three meters high and two wide, was wide open. The humans had looked, of course, but only from the door. They hadn't disturbed the quarters, nor even the almost incorrupt skeleton of a kessentai that lay on its side therein. No more did Guano. He made a nod of respect to the remains, but then pushed on, raising clouds of ancient dust.
My people think much alike, one to another, and so I think the trove will be there.
Underneath the dust, a rectangular something arose slightly above the floor. Guano bent, brushed away some dust until he could see and grasp the handle, and, with a great deal of straining, lifted it. Inside, so he saw, were some hundreds of small bars of gold, "heavy metal," as his people called it.
"This will be useful," Guano said aloud, as he began filling his utility pouch with the golden fingers.
Chapter Twenty-three
"Answers were sought and answers were found.
Whether the questions were the right ones
Remains to be seen." So said our lord.
—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren
Anno Domini 2011
Posleen Ship Arganaza'al
It was there, all the time, plainly written for anyone to see; so thought Finba'anaga. The Aldenata had the power of gods. The Posleen, some of them, had rebelled—and only slightly and indirectly—against that power. And then the Aldenata, like petty, petulant gods, had punished the entire species.
Fearful, fearful, the kessentai thought. My instincts were correct.
Coming to even such understanding of the Aldenata language as Finba had, had been exquisitely difficult. Going from that understanding to reading some of the scrolls the Rememberer gave him to study had been worse.
But I must not think of them as petty, petulant gods, for they might have been our gods, our legitimate gods, and, if so, we were wrong to rebel. Otherwise, we'd not have been punished, guilty and innocent alike. That rebellion perhaps showed a deep flaw not just in the rebels, the Knowers, but in our species as a whole.
There must be a way to make amends, to once again bask in the sunshine of our gods' smiles. Or, failing that, to avoid them completely. But what is it?
Nura'gantar, the ruined
Like most kessentai and kessenalt who had survived the experience of orna'adar, Binastarion, the one-eyed, had never before seen the final result. Typically, the high chiefs were among the first to escape, even as the major weapons, anti-matter and nuclear, were searing the planet from which they fled. Late-fleers, as often as not, were picked off by others likewise fleeing.
Thus, the planet of Nura'gantar was a shock.
And shocking in more ways than one . . . and shocking deep in the soul.
This had been a major Posleen world, at one time, even if there was nothing in the records to indicate it. Records or not, the sensors showed vast cities there, below the soil. In places, too, the pyramidal palaces of long dead God-kings stuck up above the surface soil. These, however, also showed the drip of melted stone and the glazing of incredible heat.
Binastarion was able to trace the various sides of the orna'adar that had sterilized the planet. Far below the surface tunnels connected the cities into groups, while those tunnels pointedly did not connect other cities or other groups. Oddly, there were great areas where the destruction could not even be accounted for by anti-matter weapons.
The population of the place must have been immense for its size, so Binastarion thought, since the tunnels went out even under the seas to places that had also been slagged.
Odd, he thought. Every place I know of that's descended into orna'adar did so long before population pressure forced us to colonize under large bodies of water. Perhaps the people here didn't have enough ships to leave, or enough to leave in time.
Binastarion had a sudden, and not entirely welcome, thought. "AS, get me the Arganaza'al."
"Yes, Binastarion . . . the Arganaza'al is listening."
"Tulo'stenaloor, here, Binastarion. What have you found?"
"Nothing but what we expected, Tulo: Destruction. But I had a sudden thought."
Tulo's growls sounded impatient when he asked, "Yes, what was that?"
"Well . . . we are so far in past the area the Galactics called the 'Posleen Blight' that I've the very odd feeling that this is the world of our original exile, the world Rongasintas fled as told of in the Scroll of Flight and Resettlement. I thought you might run that possibility past the Rememberer.
"Meanwhile, I'll continue my survey. Binastarion, out."
Ship Arganaza'al
"It is . . . possible," the Rememberer agreed, with a shrug, "though I think Binastarion has made a leap of logic that the record simply will not support . . ."
"Yes it will, Lord," Finba interjected. "At least in part it will."
"Speak, puppy," the Rememberer ordered. "What have you found that suggests this is the world of exile?"
"There is only one word for exile in Aldenata that I have found, Lord," Finba answered. "It is a pictogram, a small dot to the left of a large circle. In other words . . ."
"A moon of a gas giant? You think so, Finba?" Tulo asked.
Somewhat flattered that the high chief even knew his name, the younger kessentai bowed his head. "It is the only word I have found for exile, Lord. And this is a dot around a circle."
"Interesting," Tulo agreed. "It
might be important to our history to know . . ."
"Oh, I see," Golo said, sneeringly. "You're willing to risk my suit, right enough, but you're not willing to risk me?"
"Exactly!" Tulo agreed with a toothy Posleen grin. "You matter. Unless you can replicate the material of your suit, it doesn't matter. So why not send down your assistant in it, to find whatever can be found?"
"Because . . . well . . . the honor of the thing?"
"You have honor in plenty, Tinkerer. Give the young one a chance."
"I mistrust Finba's experience."
"Pfah. Nonsense and other stuff. He's very bright, as you remind me regularly. Besides, the best entrance the sensors have found to one of the cities below is underwater and that helps with the radiation. It's also the place where the sensors picked up what appear to be the remains of a lot of ships. I'd like to know about those."