The Centauri Surprise

by Alastair Mayer

  RICO HAD NO IDEA how many days had passed since he’d been moved to the room. With no windows, the only way he could keep track of time was by the meals he was served. He could turn the lights on and off whenever he wanted, so that didn’t help. The meals came through a small hatch in the wall beside the door. Each consisted of a generic hand-meal and some kind of protein drink. There was no differentiation between breakfast or dinner, and Rico had no idea if the meals were delivered regularly or not.

  He had tried to rig up a crude water clock, letting the faucet in the bathroom sink drip slowly into the plastic tumbler he drank out of, and counting the number of times it filled and he’d emptied it. He gave up on that after he fell asleep and woke up to find the cup overflowing.

  He was up to his eleventh meal, and slowly going crazy with boredom, when he got another visit from “Agent Friday”.

  “Are you ready to talk?” Friday said.

  “I may have forgotten how,” Rico replied dryly. “Have you called the UDT?”

  “What’s Project Blue Book?”

  Rico’s eyes widened in surprise before he could suppress his reaction. Had Friday known about it from the beginning, or had he talked to Ducayne’s outfit? And if the latter, why would they have told him anything?

  “I dunno. Some kind of coloring book? Or something pornographic like a blue movie?” He didn’t know where he’d heard that last term, it certainly wasn’t current slang, but wherever he’d heard it the phrase had stuck.

  “What is the UDT’s interest in flying saucers?”

  “Same as their interest in flying cups? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Rico, this would go a lot faster if you’d just tell us the truth. You do know that lying to a government agent is a crime, right?”

  “So is impersonating a government agent. You talk a lot, but you haven’t given me any proof that you are who you say you are. This room I’m in could be anywhere.”

  Friday glared at Rico. Rico got the idea that the agent would be much happier if Rico were still in the traumapod, wired up to whatever lie detector and shock apparatus they’d used before. That he wasn’t so wired up now was interesting. If all this was being recorded, as Rico assumed it was, then perhaps they didn’t want any evidence of mistreating him. Which could mean they were planning to let him go. Eventually. Either that, or this was the “good cop” phase, and things were going to start getting nasty. Whatever. Rico had been put through hell by characters a lot worse than this joker.

  As if Friday knew what Rico was thinking, he said, “If we were really bad guys, Rico, we’d be raking you over the coals, perhaps literally, to get what we wanted. You already know the lie-detecting gear we have.”

  “You’re going to have to work on your threats. That was about as lame as they come.”

  Friday glanced at the guard by the door and made a slight nod. The speed at which the big man moved caught Rico unaware, and he found himself hoisted by his shirt front and slammed against the wall. The guard held him there, a half-meter off the floor. Rico started to react, trying to kick the guard in the crotch, but the man tossed Rico aside and stepped back. Rico fell to the floor.

  “Is that what you had in mind?” Friday said as Rico picked himself up. The guard had resumed his position by the door. He hadn’t uttered a word.

  “Uh, I guess that was a good start.” Rico sat back down on the bed, rethinking any plans he might have had of rushing the guard.

  “You need to be more careful,” Friday said. “Wet bathroom floors can be slippery. I’d hate for you to have a nasty fall and injure yourself.”

  Rico considered that. The threat was thinly veiled, but it also suggested that perhaps everything wasn’t being constantly recorded.

  “Right,” Rico said. “Lucky for me I’m not particularly accident prone.” As he said that, he remembered the number of times he’d woken up in a traumapod over the past year, and smiled ruefully.

  “Something funny?” the agent asked.

  “Inside joke.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Anything to say about what you were doing on Earth?” As Friday asked that, he raised a finger and beckoned the guard over.

  Here it comes, thought Rico. “I told you before. UDT business, and you don’t need to know any more than that.” He steeled himself against the inevitable blows. They didn’t come.

  “All right, Rico. Here’s the deal. If I prove to you we are who I say we are, will you start cooperating?”

  Rico wondered what the catch was, but said “I’m always happy to cooperate with law enforcement and other government authorities.”

  Friday raised a skeptical eyebrow, then gave his head a slight shake. “All right.” He looked toward the guard and stood up. Rico braced himself.

  “I’ll be back,” Friday said. “I need to make some arrangements.”

  “Set up a masquerade, you mean?” Rico said, relaxing.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not worth the effort. I’ll be back.”

  With that, he and the guard left Rico alone again.

  CHAPTER 33: TREK

  Anderson Wildlife Preserve

  CARSON AND THE others hiked on for about an hour. In several places, they’d noticed strange scars on widely separated tree trunks, like a healed-over slash.

  “That might be from the trail my grandfather blazed,” Alex Finley said when Carson commented on them. “He’s told me the story. Said he used his geologist’s pick to mark some of the trees to make it easier to find their way back.”

  “I’m surprised they still show after all this time,” Dundee said.

  “Some of them probably don’t,” Carson said. “It depends on the tree, and how deep the mark was, and things like precipitation and growth rates and such.” At his companions’ puzzled expressions, he shrugged and added, “It’s one of the things archeologists look for when trying to date a site, or for how long a place might have been occupied. It’s not very quantitative, but it gives a general feel.”

  “Well, learn something new every day,” Dundee said, before checking his omni and continuing forward.

  It was a few minutes later that Carson noticed a subtle change in the character of the forest. The trees seemed not so tall as they had before, and the space between them was larger. They were the same species as elsewhere in the forest, so something else must have changed.

  “I think we’re getting close,” he said, and looked at his omni to check. “Maybe another hundred meters.”

  Dundee scanned the area all around them before looking at his own omni. “Agreed. Let’s go.”

  The ground began to slope upward in the last dozen meters, probably build up from material that had eroded down the slope of the peak, which rose sharply at a forty-five-degree angle just beyond.

  Carson looked up at it, taking it all in. The slope was flat, with scattered scrub brush and the occasional tree growing out of it. While he could see no obvious exposed stone, the flatness and regularity of the surface, despite the covering of vegetation, convinced him that this was no natural feature. It was a pyramid, and from the looks of it, someone—or something—had deliberately tried to, if not bury it, at least disguise it. He wondered who, and why.

  CHAPTER 34: SPACE GUARD

  Somewhere in Sawyer City

  IT HADN’T BEEN very long, perhaps an hour, when the door to Rico’s cell opened again. Friday and the guard were back.

  “On your feet, Rico,” Friday said. “Hands behind your back.”

  “What’s this?” Rico asked as he complied. The guard stepped behind him and cuffed Rico’s hands together, then bent and shackled his ankles with a short chain.

  “Insurance. In case you change your mind about cooperating. We’re going to go for a little walk. You missed a lot when we brought you here.”

  Finally, Rico thought, some answers. “Lead on, then.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Agent
Friday led Rico, with the guard following, along the corridor that he had been wheeled down several days earlier. They passed the door to the medical bay, or whatever they called the room where the traumapod had been, and kept going past that to a wider area in the hall, where there were elevator doors.

  The elevator arrived, and Friday gestured for Rico to enter. “Stay facing the back wall, please,” he said, then he and the guard followed him in.

  Rico glanced around at the rear wall and as much of the elevator he could see without turning. It was obvious that Friday didn’t want him to know what floor they got on at, and maybe not which what floor they’d get off at, or anything in between if the elevator stopped anywhere else. Rico could appreciate that. At least they didn’t put a bag over my head.

  He could tell from the acceleration that the elevator was going up, not down, but there was no chime or other audible indicator of how many floors they passed. There weren’t many tall buildings in Sawyer City, if that’s where they really were, but the elevator could have just been slow. Either way, Rico counted about forty-three seconds from the time the elevator started until it stopped. He had no idea what he could do with that information, but it was something.

  The doors opened and Friday and the guard each took one of Rico’s elbows and backed him out. There were no floor indicators on the outside of the elevator here, either, just the call buttons. They turned him around.

  Rico looked out over an open, modular area that could have been any government or commercial office. There were windows across the room. He was on perhaps the fourth or fifth floor, and there were other buildings outside. It could well be Sawyer City, but he didn’t immediately recognize anything which would tell him just where.

  The personnel at the desks, and a few standing or walking, were dressed in a mix of civvies and uniforms. A couple of them glanced over in his direction and then returned to their work. The uniforms weren’t police. They might have been Space Guard, but Rico wasn’t certain, and didn’t get a close look at them.

  “This way,” Friday said, tugging on his elbow.

  There was little in the way of decoration on any of the few interior walls. Some generic scenic photographs, of which Rico recognized a few scenes from Sawyers World and Kakuloa, and a few deep sky images, some showing ships or asteroids. One paneled wall held a large plaque, the seal of the Alpha Centauri Treaty Organization, not of the Sawyers World government. Now that was interesting.

  Friday guided Rico to a small conference room and waved him inside. He muttered something to the guard, who remained outside while Friday followed Rico in and closed the door.

  “Have a seat.” the agent gestured to the chairs around the table dominating the room. One wall was glass, but with Venetian blinds lowered and mostly closed. There was a large wall screen behind one end of the table. Rico chose a seat where he could see the door and, to some extent, through the glass wall. Friday sat across from him, but also in a position where he could see the door.

  “Well, anything to say?” Friday asked.

  “I’ll give you this. If you’re not who you say you are, you’ve gone to elaborate lengths to convince me otherwise. I could still be on a sound stage somewhere.”

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  “But I don’t think I am,” Rico continued. “So tell me, what does ACTO have to do with Sawyers World Homeworld Defense?”

  “You saw the seal? Good. How much do you know about the Treaty of Alpha Centauri?”

  Rico didn’t see any harm in telling what little he knew. “Same as most, I guess. Established between the original settlers and Earth, it grants autonomy to Sawyers World and joint authority over Kakuloa. I guess it has something to do with law enforcement on Kakuloa and in space in the Alpha Centauri system. Not really something I ever thought much about. Why?”

  “Close enough. Yes, Sawyers World is autonomous but with an invited UDT presence. Space Guard is officially a branch of the Sawyers World military—hell, it’s most of the Sawyers World military—but cooperates with the UDT Space Force on in-system operations, like catching smugglers and terrorists.”

  “It sounds complicated,” Rico said, quite honestly.

  “You have no idea.”

  “So why do you, whether you’re ACTO or Space Guard or whoever you are, care about me and what I was doing on Earth? I’m not a smuggler or a terrorist.”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” Friday said. “We don’t know that. All we know is you were involved in a shoot-out with Velkaryans—yes, we know about the Velkaryans—and that you are, or were, or associated with, a known smuggler. So, known smuggler connections, and involved in shoot-outs in public places. Maybe you’re both a smuggler and a terrorist.”

  “But—”

  “Anyway,” the agent continued, ignoring the interruption, “since you were apparently shooting at the Velkaryans rather than with them, that’s a point in your favor. We’re concerned about the Velkaryans; we need to know if we need to be concerned about you.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Rico looked at him and smiled broadly. “The answer is no. Can I go now?”

  “Just ‘no’? And you expect us to take your word on that?”

  “I told you, call the UDT and ask them yourself.”

  “You promised to be cooperative.”

  “I didn’t say I would reveal classified information.” Oh, shit, I shouldn’t have said that, Rico realized.

  “Your assignment on Earth was classified? By whom?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The agent waited, staring at Rico, as if wondering if Rico would say more. Then he said, “Tell you what, Rico. I’ll tell you a few things that we do know and you can correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Rico thought about that, then remembered the phrasing. “I can neither confirm nor deny—”

  “Cut the bullshit, Rico. I won’t ask you anything like that.”

  Rico didn’t believe him, but was curious as to how much Friday thought he knew. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  CHAPTER 35: PETE'S PEAK

  Pete’s Peak

  “I’M NO GEOLOGIST,” Steve Dundee said, looking up at steep sloping side they were facing, “but that doesn’t look like any volcanic plug I ever saw.”

  “Seen many, have you?” Alex Finley asked. Carson thought Finley sounded a bit defensive, possibly because his grandfather was the one who had declared it a volcanic plug or neck, at least publicly.

  “Well, no,” Dundee admitted, “just pictures. But wouldn’t it be steeper and more irregular?”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” Carson said. “In Peter Finley’s defense, their scans did show some kind of solid mass descending straight downward, as you’d expect from an extinct volcano.”

  “All right. Where do we start?”

  “I want to do a complete walk around it first, to see if there’s anything obvious on any of the sides,” Carson said. “I don’t think Maclaren and Finley did when they were here. Alex?”

  The younger Finley shook his head. “No, from what I remember of what he’s told me, they just walked around until they found somewhere clear to climb up. It was getting near nightfall, so they didn’t want to waste any time.”

  Carson checked his omni. It was not yet noon. “We have plenty of time, so that’s not an issue.” Still looking at his omni, he set a marker at their current location. “If we find something interesting before we get back to this point, we’ll investigate. Otherwise this seems as good a point as any to dig for a bit. Does that work for you, Steve?”

  Dundee nodded. “For now, sure.”

  “Sounds good,” added Finley. “Let’s go.”

  They led off to their left, keeping the Peak’s slope on their right, walking where the ground began to slope upward but was not so steep as to make it difficult to walk.

  “You’ve seen other pyramids, both on Earth and elsewhere,” Finley said to Carson. “Were they like this?”

  It was an astute question, Ca
rson thought. “There’s a lot of variation,” he said. “For one, there’s the actual style of the individual pyramid, depending on which culture built it. Mayan step pyramids are quite different from Egyptian pyramids, for example. The big blocks of the Egyptian pyramids look like steps, but they were originally covered with limestone casing stones to make the sides smooth. There’s still some of those left near the top of the Khafre pyramid, but most either fell off over the centuries or were carried off for building material. The much smaller pyramid I found on Verdigris—” he referred to the one where he’d found the talisman, and was raided by artifact smugglers, not the Spacefarer-built structure that someone else, probably the Velkaryans, had found near New Toronto before him “—was a variation on the local dome-shaped tombs. It was pyramidal, but the tomb opening was similar.”

  “None of them were covered like this?”

  “Well, a lot of what I’ve seen first-hand, especially in the Yucatan, had already been excavated. Early sketches of them show quite a bit of dirt and vegetation covering them, but the wide steps and surrounding jungle made it easier for leaf debris and plants to accumulate. The Egyptian pyramids are in the middle of a desert, so aside from where sand has drifted over the base; they’re pretty bare. The one on Verdigris was moss-covered, just like pretty much anything else on that planet.”

  “It’s really that bad?” Finley asked.

  “No, not really. I’m exaggerating, but the place didn’t get the name Verdigris for no reason. Not that it’s all like that, it has polar caps and even a desert or two. Have you never been off-planet?”

  “Only to Kakuloa, and to Earth once. I hated that last, it’s way too crowded. But never further out, not yet. I’d like to.”

  Carson nodded. He understood that outward urge, and the feeling of Earth being too crowded. He’d left as soon as he’d had the chance. “It’s worth doing. But you’re only what, twenty or so standard years old? Lots of time.”

  “Twenty-two, but sure. I’m not sure my father entirely gets it. He was the baby of the family, my aunts are older, so maybe that has something to do with it. But his parents, Pete and Naomi, they understand.”