by Paul Preuss
“Quit poor-mouthin’. You been takin’ plenty off us.”
“Yeah, and I’m plannin’ to do it again tonight. You got one more chance before the others show up. Front me to these pals of yours in Lab City, you can keep a third.”
“Forget it. Best turn it straight in. That way at least you’re a hero. Every day you keep it you’re askin’ fer a ticket to jail.”
Passage doors popped, away on the other side of the dome. Somebody’s belch echoed off the stacks of pipe.
“What if I said there’s more out there, Liam? Other stuff with this funny writing. And stuff I can’t tell what it is.”
“You tryin’ to con me, Johnny?”
“Hell, no.”
“A lot of stuff?”
“Make up your mind first.”
“I’ll mull it over.”
“Boo, you guys.” A laugh sounded right behind them, slung over the arch of the dome. “It’s game time.”
“I want no tales circulatin’, Liam”—hardly even a whisper now—“You’re the only soul on Mars knows what I got.”
“You can trust me, John.”
“Good. We’ll both stay healthy.”
A week later, already four days behind schedule, the crew finally got the rig up and started to sink pipe. The sun went down in the red Martian sky, taking a pack of sundogs with it. Liam and Johnny were working the drillhead. They’d been hard at it for four hours and they were already down to permafrost when the pipe kicked—nobody ever did figure out how it happened, but it was no surprise, this was not a tight ship—but then Johnny really screwed up and it got away from him and the business end of the pipe blew a hole in the ice. Which normally would have resulted in maybe some people getting a quick ride back to the unemployment line in Labyrinth City, except right underneath them there was a big pocket of pressurized gas in the permafrost and it blew too, and the whole pipe rack went way, way up like a bundle of straws, and then all the straws came back down on Liam and John.
A man’s fine blond hair fell to within millimeters of the etched metal where it rested on the green baize desktop. “How did he come to be in possession of this exquisite thing?” The man was big-boned and tall, but his movements were precise and delicate. As he bent to inspect the plaque, he was careful not to let a hair touch it; he was reluctant even to let his breath cloud its shining surface.
“He must have picked it out of the sand, sometime within the past two months. Certainly he hadn’t the slightest idea of its worth.” The other man was older, pinstriped and crewcut. He flicked a holomap of the North Pole onto the mapscreen. “Our crew has hit these four sites since they went out in the spring. Spent roughly two weeks in each.” His blunt index finger pushed at four glowing dots that formed a ragged curve around the terraced ice. “The discipline was appalling, Albers. People took rovers and went joy-riding whenever they liked. Just where to is anyone’s guess. I’ve sacked the foreman and the district manager. Not in time to do us any good, I’m sorry to say.”
The tall man, an archaeologist, straightened and pushed his hair back. The sadness of his wide, down-turned mouth was offset by eager gray eyes, exuberantly bushy eyebrows, and a forehead that climbed to the high latitudes of his skull before disappearing under his blond hair. “This couldn’t possibly have been an isolated artifact. Surely there’s an incomparable treasure out there.”
“And we’ll do our best to find it,” said the executive. “Can’t hold out much hope, though. At least this piece is in your good hands now.”
Together they studied it in silence. The drilling man’s reverence was as profound as the archaeologist’s.
The blond archaeologist had spent ten years following the drilling crews, searching the frosted sands, tracing Martian watercourses that had dried to powder a billion years ago. He and his colleagues who specialized in paleontology had found fossils in abundance, simple forms highly adapted to a climate that had swung between frightening extremes of wet and dry, cyclone and calm, cold and colder.
But what drew archaeologists to this sparse ground were the scattered remnants of a different order of life—not fossils, not scraps of shell or bone, but the remains of what might have been implements made of novel alloys, and here and there tantalizing hints of what might have been structures. All these creatures—the abundant life that had crept across Mars and wallowed in the wet sands beside the desert-scouring flash floods, and the beings, whatever they were, who had left only hints of their advanced development—all these had flourished and vanished before life on Earth had evolved to anything more complex than blue-green algae.
Now the metal mirror on the desk, incised with a thousand characters, gave testimony that a billion years ago Mars had been host to a high culture.
“I suppose Forster knows of this already.”
“Yes, I regret to say,” the driller replied. “The word spread fast on the grapevine. Forster’s on his way from Earth now.”
A smile flirted with the archaeologist’s mournful mouth. “It will be amusing to see what he makes of it.”
“He’s already held a media conference, you know. Already given the makers of this a name.”
“Oh? What name?”
“He calls them Culture X.”
The sad archaeologist allowed himself an amused grunt. “Dear Professor Forster. Always energetic. Not always very original.”
“That at least is to our advantage.”
No efforts of drilling teams or scientists ever found any trace of a treasure hoard on Mars. But ten years after the discovery of the Martian plaque, a mining robot on the surface of Venus—a planet as different from Mars as hell from limbo—was prospecting in a narrow canyon near an ancient beach, a beach a billion years old. The robot’s diamond-edged proboscis cut through a wall of rock and came upon strange things. Within hours news went out across the solar system that Culture X had been, without doubt, a spacefaring species.
PART
1
CONCERNING
RESEARCH
INTO LOST TIME
1
Sparta closed her eyes, stretched in the tub, and let her chin bob at the water line. At the threshold of sound, the water fizzed. Droplets condensed on her eyelashes; invisible bubbles tickled her nose. The odor of sulfur hung lightly over the baths.
The precise chemical formulation of the minerals in the water appeared unbidden in her mind’s eye; they changed every day, and today the water cocktail mimicked the baths of Cambo-les-Bains in the Pays Basque. Sparta analyzed her environment wherever she went, without thinking about it. It was a reflex.
She floated easily; she weighed less, and the water weighed less, than they would have on Earth. She was a long way from Earth. Minutes went by and the warm water rocked her into relaxed drowsiness as she savored the news she had long awaited and only today received, her orders from Space Board headquarters: her assignment here was ended, and she was recalled to Earth Central.
“Are you Ellen?” The voice was quiet, tentative but warm.
Sparta opened her eyes and saw a young woman standing shadowed in the mist, naked but for the towel wrapped around her waist. Her straight black hair was tied in a bun.
“Where is Keiko?”
“Keiko was unable to come today. I’m Masumi. If it is all right with you, I will give you your massage.”
“I hope Keiko isn’t ill.”
“A minor legal matter. She asked me to apologize for her, most sincerely.”
Sparta listened to the woman’s soft voice. She heard nothing but the simple truth. She rose from the tub. Her slick skin, rosy with heat, gleamed in the filtered light from the terrace. The diffuse light played over her dancer’s small taut figure, over her slight breasts, over her flat stomach and abdomen ridged with muscle and her slim hard thighs.
Her disheveled blond hair, soaking wet in back where it had been submerged, fell straight to her jaw line; she kept it chopped off straight, with little regard for fashion. Her full lips were perpetually parted, tasti
ng the air.
“Here’s a towel for you,” Masumi said. “Would you like to go on the upper terrace? We still have an hour of Venus-light.”
“Certainly.” Sparta followed the woman along the row of steaming tubs and up the steps to the open roof deck, brushing the water from her shoulders and breasts as she walked.
“Excuse me a moment, please. They forgot to take the tables in before the last rain.” Masumi spilled the film of water from the waist-high massage table and rubbed it dry while Sparta stood at the low rail, swiping at the last drops of moisture on her flanks and calves.
She looked down over the houses and gardens of Port Hesperus. The flat roofs descended below her in steps, like the roofs of a Greek village on a steep hillside, each house with its enclosed courtyard of citrus trees and flowering plants. At the bottom of the hill were the parallel main streets of the village, and between them, gardens of exotic shrubs and towering trees, redwoods and firs, tall poplars and yellow ginkgoes. These famous gardens, landscaped by Seno Sato, were what made Port Hesperus a destination worth a wealthy tourist’s visit.
The streets and the gardens curved sharply up to the left and right and met high above Sparta’s head. Behind her and to both sides a huge concavity of glass slats swept up to embrace the houses and trees in a single globe. Half a kilometer away in the enclosed sky, a metal spindle threaded this sphere of glass and metal and plants and people; around the shining spindle the whole populous globe turned twice a minute.
To Sparta’s right, sunlight poured into the sphere. To her left, an arc of Venus blazed like a polished shield; the planet’s white clouds showed no detail, seemed not to move, although they were driven by supersonic winds. Over Sparta’s head the whirling sun was rivaled by the reflection of Venus—a million reflections, one in each louvered pane, rolling around the axis of Port Hesperus.
The high-orbiting station would take another hour to pass over the planet’s sunlit hemisphere and into the night. By natural sunlight, the days on Port Hesperus were only a few hours long, but people here made their own time.
“Is there anything you particularly wanted to work on?” Masumi asked. “Keiko mentioned recurring headaches?”
“I seem to have a lot of tension at the base of my skull.”
“If you would just lie down—”
Sparta climbed onto the table and lay with her cheek pressed into the padding. She closed her eyes. She heard the woman moving about, arranging her things—the oil, the towels, the footstool she would stand on when she needed to reach Sparta’s lower back from above. With her acute hearing, Sparta heard the almost inaudible sound of fragrant oil flowing onto Masumi’s hands, heard the louder sound of Masumi’s palms briskly stroking each other and warming the oil…
The heat of Masumi’s palms hovered an inch above Sparta’s shoulders, then descended strongly, moving the flesh… As the minutes passed, her strong fingers and the heels of her hands plowed the muscles of Sparta’s back down the whole length of her trunk, from shoulders to buttocks and back again, and down her arms to her upturned, lightly curled fingers.
There Masumi hesitated. To pause at this moment in a massage, just after a strong beginning, was not characteristic of an alert, trained masseuse—but Sparta was used to it, and anticipated the question.
“You were injured?”
“A traffic accident,” Sparta mumbled, her cheek pressed hard into the fabric. “When I was sixteen. Almost ten years ago.” It was a lie, repeated so often she sometimes forgot it was a lie.
“Bone grafts?”
“Something like that. Artificial reinforcements.”
“Any sensitivity?”
“Please don’t worry,” Sparta said. “Keiko usually goes deep. I like that.”
“Very well.”
The woman resumed her work. The repetitive long strokes of Masumi’s hands on Sparta’s bare skin warmed her; she felt herself sinking warmly into the padded table, under the warm sun and the reflected warmth of Venus and the circulating warmth of the space station’s great garden sphere. Before long she had been kneaded and stretched into complete and rubbery relaxation.
Sparta’s eyelid opened at the hot bite of pain, as Masumi’s fingers pressed into a knot in her right shoulder. Under the insistent pressure of the masseuse’s fingers, Sparta’s spasmed muscles slowly began to unclench—not without her willed cooperation. And when the knot finally unraveled, she felt an unaccustomed rush of emotion…
She could be the greatest of us
She resists our authority
William, she’s a child
To resist us is to resist the Knowledge
A groan escaped Sparta’s parted lips. Masumi went on with her work, making no comment. Under deep tissue massage, people often found themselves involuntarily reliving moments of past anguish; letting those memories resurface was part of the process.
Sparta had learned that lesson early, shortly after her first visit to the spa—one reason she had taken to Keiko’s style of massage. Keiko’s expert hands had not only soothed her aching body, they had allowed and encouraged Sparta to reach deeper into her own buried memories, as Masumi’s hands were doing now.
Memories and lies. Lying memories.
The voices she heard were the voices of the people who had tried to erase all her memories. They had tried to cut them out with a knife. They had not wanted her to remember what they had done to her. They had not wanted her to remember her parents, or ever to question what had become of them. And in the end, they had not wanted her to live. They had done their best to kill her; they had tried again and again.
A compassionate doctor had made what repairs he could, but years had gone by before he acted.
Her somatic skills had survived. She could do things she did not remember learning how to do. Her body had been interfered with in ways she only partially understood. In her memory many facts survived from before the intervention, but only a few fragments of fact survived from afterward; things came up at odd moments, in odd contexts. Yet she knew she did not want to be what she had been.
Sparta took a new name, a new identity, a new face.
Then they had learned who she was and where she was.
She did not know who they were, except for one of them who was now permanently disabled and out of the way, and one other, the one she feared and hated most. She did not know whether she would recognize him, when it mattered.
Masumi’s hands dug into her shoulders again. Sparta floated into the pain and through it and found herself becoming very drowsy. Her eyes closed. A cheerful babble of voices—English, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, some of them children’s voices—floated in from far away, from the busy streets that flanked Sato’s gardens.
Another memory came to her, this one less than a half a year old. The first time she had laid eyes on Sato’s beautiful gardens, she had been hiding in a transformer room up inside the central spindle, peering through a grille. She had not been alone. With her was another man who had pursued her and found her, whom she had not spoken to since her former life, whom she did not trust but wanted to. His name was Blake Redfield; he was almost her age, and like her he had been chosen for the experiments, although they had never done to him what they had done to her. As the two of them hid in the transformer room from enemies still unknown, Blake had told her what he’d learned about her past, about the SPARTA project which had brought them together and from which she took her secret name. That time they had escaped their pursuers, but they were far from free of danger.
Almost half an hour passed in thoughts of Blake, thoughts that alternately pleased and frightened Sparta. Four months ago he had left her to return to Earth, warning her that she would not hear from him for a while, but refusing to tell her why. She had not received any word from him or about him since…
Masumi lifted her hands and said, “Take a moment now. When you feel comfortable, roll over, onto your back.”
After a long, deep breath Sparta did so, rolling onto h
er back, settling onto her buttocks, letting her heels snub into the fabric. For a moment, as always, she felt terribly exposed.
Masumi stood behind her head and cradled it in both hands, rolling it gently from side to side, stretching the neck muscles, slowly working down to her shoulders.
When her hands moved to Sparta’s chest and ribs, Sparta’s eyes opened in involuntary fright. There were structures under her diaphragm, artificial structures that were sensitive to touch. Sparta willed herself to relax, to allow Masumi’s hands to travel over the oblique muscles of her abdomen, trying not to betray her invisible, internal strangeness.
Masumi’s knowing hands sensed her tension and brushed lightly over the surface of Sparta’s belly, working on down to her thighs. Sparta allowed a soundless sigh to escape her lips and closed her eyes on the view of whirling planets and suns, the trees of the gardens growing upside down and sideways.
Many minutes later Masumi’s hands left her body. Masumi flipped the end of the sheet gently over Sparta’s closed eyes and said, “Relax a while before you get up. Sleep if you like.”
Sparta listened to Masumi gather her things and walk quietly away. She lay peacefully, feeling a current of cool air flow down from the windows as the sun fell gradually away to the side and the disk of Venus became a crescent. Port Hesperus was approaching the terminator.
She saw the spinning universe in her imagination. The stars became bits of colored glass, whirling, jerking into new patterns as they wheeled and fell, as regular and as infinitely variable as snowflakes or the patterns of a kaleidoscope. The colors became brighter and brighter, whirled faster and faster…
Sparta slept. The whirling colors faded, and the spinning shards of glass became dancing leaves, an autumn cyclone, sucking her deeper into the vortex. She clung dizzily to the falling raft. The swirling tunnel walls were streaks of green light and black shadow, not watery and slick but infinitely open, a million blackbirds coursing against the apple-green sky of a winter dawn.