Jack Mcdeviit - Deepsix (v1)

by Emily

  There were artifacts in the rear of the cabin, which would provide additional atmosphere. MacAllister placed himself so that a weapons rack was behind him, and the tower was visible through his window. Casey was moving things out of the way in order to get shots from different angles.

  Something large and dark rose out of the trees to the west, flapped in a large uncertain circle, and descended again. Clumsy creature, whatever it was. Yes, he thought, let's have Armageddon for this cold world and all its living freight.

  Hutch had turned away from MacAllister and was standing at the tower entrance talking to Nightingale when Chiang came on the circuit. "Hutch," he said, "we might have something else."

  "What?" she asked. "What is it?"

  "Looks like an inscription. It's in pieces, but it's writing of a sort. We've also broken through into an open corridor."

  "Where are you?"

  "Back of the library."

  "I'm on my way."

  She descended staircases and entered the tunnels, crossed the armory, and kept going until she saw lights. Toni and Chiang were examining a wall covered with symbols.

  Toni looked up, waved, and moved off to one side to provide Hutch a clear view. The wall had partially collapsed, and several large pieces lay on the ground. But it was covered with lines of engraved characters, almost all quite legible.

  "Lovely," said Hutch.

  They were not pictographs, and there was a limited number of individual symbols, suggesting she was indeed looking at an alphabet. Furthermore, the text was divided into sections.

  Paragraphs.

  There was an ethereal quality about the script. It reminded her of Arabic, with its curves and flow. "You've got pictures?" she asked.

  Toni patted her microscan. "Everything."

  Several sections of the script, at the top, were more prominent than the text that followed. "They might be names," suggested Chiang.

  "Maybe. It could be a commemorative of some sort. Heroes. Here's who they were, and there's what they did."

  "You really think so?" asked Toni.

  "Who knows?" said Hutch. "It could be anything."

  The beam from Toni's torch fell on a shard, a piece of pottery. "We really need time to excavate," Hutch said. And to move out into the city, to find the kinds of tools these people used, to unearth their houses, dig up more icons. Maybe get the answers to such basic questions as whether they used beasts of burden, how long their life spans were, what kind of gods they worshiped. "Okay," she continued. "Let's get this stuff upstairs, then we'll come back and see what else we've got."

  They cut the central section out of the wall. Chiang tried to move it, but it was too heavy to handle in the confined quarters. "Let it be for now," said Hutch. "We'll figure it out later."

  He nodded, picked up a couple of the fragments, and headed back. Toni collected two more, leaving Hutch to try to gather together the smaller pieces.

  Nightingale stood in the tower entry and tried to turn his mind to other things. He couldn't help glancing up every few minutes at the Wildside cabin, where MacAllister sat in his officious manner, gesturing and making pronouncements. Suddenly, the great man turned in his seat and looked directly at him. He got up, moved through the cabin, climbed down onto the ground, and started in his direction. Nightingale braced himself for a fight.

  "Nightingale," he said as soon as he'd gotten close, "I wonder if I could ask a favor?"

  Nightingale glared at him. "What do you want?"

  "We're going to be using this whole area as a background. Could I persuade you to stay out of sight? It works better if there's a complete sense of desolation."

  Casey snapped the recorder back on, smiled nervously at him, and resumed the interview: "In a week, Mr. MacAllister, Deepsix won't even exist anymore. It's cold and bleak, and that stone tower behind you is apparently the only building in this entire world. What brings you to this forlorn place?"

  "Morbid curiosity, Casey."

  "No, seriously."

  "I'm never anything but serious. Why else would anybody come here? I'd be the last one to want to sound morose, but loss is the one constant we all have to deal with. It's the price of living. We lose parents, friends, relatives. We lose the place we grew up in, and we lose the whole circle of our acquaintances. We spend ungodly amounts of time wondering whatever happened to former teachers and lovers and scoutmasters.

  "Here, we're losing a world. It's an event absolutely unique in human experience. An entire planet, which we now know has harbored intelligence of a sort and which still serves as a refuge for life, is going to end. Completely and finally. After these next few days, there will exist nothing of it other than what we can carry off."

  She nodded, telling him what he already knew, that this was good stuff. "You had an opportunity," she said, "to tour the tower earlier today. What were your impressions? What about it did you find significant?"

  MacAllister glanced meaningfully toward the structure. "We know that whoever built it left a telescope behind, as if to say to us, we also wanted the stars.

  "But they're lost, Casey. They probably had their own versions of Homer and Moses, Jesus and Shakespeare, Newton and Quirt. We saw the blowguns, and we know they built walls around their cities, so we can assume they fought wars. They must have had their Alexandrian campaigns, their Napoleon and Nelson, their civil wars. Now, everything they ever cared about is to be lost forever. That's a disaster of quintessential proportions. And I think it's worth coming to see. Don't you?"

  "I suppose you're right, Mr. MacAllister. Do you think anything like this could happen to us?"

  He laughed. "I'd like to think so."

  "Surely you're joking."

  "I'd be pleased to believe that when the time comes for us to make our exit, we will do so as gracefully as the inhabitants of this world. I mean, the blowguns tell us all we need to know about them. They were undoubtedly every bit as perfidious, conniving, hypocritical, and ignorant as our own brothers and sisters. But it's all covered up. The disaster gives them dignity they did not otherwise earn. Everybody looks good at his funeral.

  "We're not even sure what they looked like. Consequently, we'll remember them with a kind of halo shining over their ears. People will speak of the Maleivans in hushed voices, and with great respect. I predict that some fool in Congress or in the Council will want to erect a monument in their honor. When in fact the only thing we can be sure they achieved was that they made it to oblivion without getting caught in the act."

  During the course of his life, Nightingale couldn't recall having ever hated anyone. Other than MacAllister. In the moment that the editor had asked Nightingale to step inside the tower, he had searched his mind for the correct riposte, the cutting remark that would slice this walking pomposity into his component parts.

  But nothing had come to mind. You buffoon, he might have said, and MacAllister would have flicked him away. Windbag. Poseur.

  The pilot of the Star lander walked past him with another pile of sticks. "Chair," he said.

  "Okay."

  "Hutch said I could have it."

  "Okay."

  In the end he had meekly complied with the request and stood away from the scan's line of sight. But he really couldn't do his job properly, stowed inside the tower, couldn't see everything he needed to, especially couldn't see the strip of trees from which the biped cat had emerged. So he came out every few minutes, in a small act of defiance, walked about for a bit, and then retired back inside.

  He was following the conversations in the tunnels. Toni, hauling chunks of inscribed stone to the surface, announced that she'd found a coin. "What kind?" Nightingale asked, excited. "What's on it?"

  He was standing outside watching the trees. Watching Wetheral.

  "Just a minute," she said.

  And while he waited, the ground moved.

  It rolled beneath him. MacAllister and the woman in the lander stopped talking and turned to stare at him. Wetheral paused midway betw
een the tower and his own spacecraft and stood with the chair held absurdly over his head.

  The earth shrugged and threw Nightingale flat into the snow. He heard frightened cries on the allcom, watched the Wildside lander begin to lean over on one tread until the tread collapsed. The earth shook again, briefly. The ground and the sky seemed to be waiting. More was coming; he knew damned well more was coming.

  He thought about retreating into the tower. But that would be stupid. Why put rocks over his head? Instead he moved out away from it, but had gone only a few steps when another shock hit. Big one this time. He went down again. A ripple ran across the landscape. The snow broke apart under Wetheral's feet. The pilot tried to run, absurdly still holding the chair. The ground ripped open and he fell in. Disappeared. His lander tilted, and it, too, slid into the hole.

  All this was accomplished in an eerie silence. If Wetheral had protested, screamed, called for help, he'd been off-channel. Now a roar broke over Nightingale's ears, like an ocean crashing into a rocky headland, and the world continued to tremble. The earth shook and quieted. And shook again. An enormous stone block slammed into the snow a few meters away. He looked up, saw that it had broken off the roof, saw also that the tower had begun to lean to one side.

  The hole into which Wetheral and his lander had fallen widened. Gaped. It was becoming a chasm.

  MacAllister was sitting in the Wildside lander staring at him, or maybe at the tower, with his eyes wide. Now, thought Nightingale with a sense of grim satisfaction, let's see how it goes with you.

  Marcel came on the link and was demanding to know what was happening. Chiang reported collapsing walls. A cloud of dust rolled out of the tower. Hutch was on the allcom telling everyone to get outside.

  Kellie, who'd been on the upper level, climbed through a window, saw him, and dropped to the ground. It was a long fall but she seemed unhurt. "Did they come up yet?" she asked.

  Hutch was still on the link, saying something. He needed a moment to make it out.

  "Randy, you there?"

  "I'm here," he said. "I'm with Kellie." Just then Chiang staggered out through the entrance.

  "Over here," Kellie told him.

  Nightingale caught a glimpse of their lander. It had taken off, was in the air, trying to get away from the quake. "MacAllister's stealing the lander," he said.

  "Talk to me later. Where's Toni?"

  "Don't know. Still inside."

  "How about Chiang?"

  "Chiang's here. He's with us."

  "Toni?" said Hutch.

  Nothing.

  "Toni!"

  Still no answer.

  "Isn't she below with you?" Chiang asked her.

  "She was headed topside."

  Nightingale was knocked down again at the same moment that he heard a distant explosion.

  Hutch was still calling Toni's name.

  As she moved through the tunnel with her artifacts, Toni was acutely aware of the considerable weight of rock, dirt, and ice overhead. Given her choice, she'd have taken permanent guard duty, preferably at the top of the tower.

  She was on her hands and knees, the slabs slung in a pack around her shoulders, thinking about Scolari. He was alone in Wildside with Embry. She had no reason to be jealous, but she felt a stab anyhow. It was hard to imagine that they had not been together these last couple of nights.

  She was trying to decide how much responsibility Hutch bore for her loss when the quake came.

  The floor shook. Dust rained down on her, the room sagged, and a crossbeam crashed down directly in front of her. The room continued to tremble, and she threw herself flat out and put her hands over her head. Her lamp went out. She tried crawling past the fallen beam but the room kept moving, tilting, and then a terrible grinding began above her. The overhead grated and rasped and screeched. Something cracked, loud and hard, like a tree broken in two. Or a backbone.

  A weight fell on her, driving the air from her lungs, pinning her to the floor. A darkness, deeper and blacker than that in the chamber, rushed through her. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't call anyone.

  Somewhere, she heard a voice. Hutch's, she thought, but she couldn't make out what she was saying.

  Her last thought was that all her plans, her new career, Scolari, her return home, the child she hoped one day to bear, none of it was going to happen.

  She wasn't even going to get off this goddam world.

  Hutch was crawling through the dark when Nightingale came on the circuit. "I think we've got some bad news out here," he said. "What?" she asked, bracing herself.

  MacAllister watched with horror as first Wetheral and then the Star spacecraft disappeared into the chasm that had opened, that was still opening, like a vast pair of jaws. Wetheral had frozen, not knowing which way to run, had slipped and gone to his knees, and the crevice had come after him like a tiger after a deer while he futilely jabbed that pathetic pile of sticks at it as if to fend it off. He was still jabbing, falling backward, when it took him and, in quick succession, took the lander.

  Their own vehicle was shaking itself to pieces. He looked at Casey, and her eyes were wide with fear.

  The ground beside them broke open, and the lander began to sink. The hatch, which was not shut, swung wide, and MacAllister stared down into a chasm.

  Got to get out. They would die if they stayed where they were. But the only exit was through the hatch, which hung out over the hole.

  He searched for something he could use to knock out a window. Casey read his mind and shook her head. "They're not breakable," she cried.

  A door in the rear of the cabin led through to the cargo locker, but he'd never fit. The angle kept getting more pronounced. They were sliding into the chasm. MacAllister leaned hard to his right, in the opposite direction, pushed against his chair arm, as if that might slow the process.

  "My God, Casey." His voice squeaked. "Get us out of here."

  "Me?' Her face was pale. "What do you expect me to do?"

  "You said you could fly these damned things."

  "I said I had some experience with landers. This is a bus."

  "Do it. Try it, for God's sake, or—"

  She got up and climbed into the pilot's seat, taking care not to look toward the hatch.

  "Use the autopilot," MacAllister urged. "Just telrit to take off."

  "It doesn't know who I am," she said. "It has to be reset to respond to me."

  "Then reset it."

  They were sliding.

  "That takes time." She blurted the words.

  "Casey—"

  "I know. Don't you think I know?" She was bent over the control board.

  He was pushing hard, trying to get as far as he could from the airlock. "Do something!"

  "I have to figure out how to disengage the autopilot."

  "Maybe it's that thing over there." He pointed to a yellow switch.

  "This is going to go a whole lot better if you don't talk too much just now. I'll..." She pressed a stud, apparently having found what she was looking for.

  MacAllister heard a few electronic bleeps, then the soft rumble of power somewhere beneath the seat. The restraints locked him down, and he gripped the chair arms and closed his eyes.

  The seat lifted, and the spacecraft seemed to begin righting itself. Locked behind squeezed-shut eyelids, he couldn't be sure what was happening and was afraid to look. He was regretting the stupidity that had brought him down to this despicable place. His life for a pile of rubble.

  Gravity flowed away, and the lander began to rise. "Good, Casey," he said, speaking from his long experience that one should encourage people when they're doing what you desperately want them to do. As if she might otherwise crash the spacecraft.

  He slowly opened his eyes. She was moving a yoke, pulling it back, slowly, cautiously, and he saw that she was every bit as terrified as he was. The ground was several meters below, dropping away. Thank God.

  They rose over the crevice. It appeared still to be wid
ening. Great mounds of earth and snow were crashing into it.

  The vehicle dipped suddenly, and Casey fought for control.

  "You're doing fine," MacAllister pleaded. "Beautiful."

  "Please shut up," she snapped.

  He wished she sounded more confident. He wished she would head for the north, where there was plenty of space, worlds of space, of quiet flat plain, and just set it down. It seemed easy enough. She'd already done the hard part. Yet she continued to wrestle with the yoke and the engine made odd noises and they spurted across the sky and then she slowed them down and a sudden wind hammered at them.

  "Is something wrong?" he asked.

  The vehicle lurched. Dropped. Soared. "The spike," she said through clenched teeth. "It's different from the system I trained on."

  "Just take your time."

  "Need to use the thrusters," she said.

  "Can you do it?"

  "If I can figure out how to aim them."

  MacAllister caught a glimpse of Nightingale kneeling in the snow, watching. Lucky bastard, he thought. Luck of the draw. The crevice opens under us instead of under him. In the end, survival goes not to the fit, but to the fortunate. It explains a lot about the way Darwin really works.

  At that moment the thrusters roared on. The seat came up and hit MacAllister in the rear. The ground blurred beneath him, and Casey yelped and began frantically doing things to the console. He decided that his Darwinian thought would be his last, and composed himself for the inevitable. Dead in a spacecraft accident on a distant world. But not in the canyon, at least. Not buried.

  They raced over the ground toward a line of hills in the northwest, and it occurred to him that they would not be able to take him back for proper disposal. Because the madwoman at the controls was about to wreck the lander. And nobody was going to volunteer to come down from orbit to pick up the pieces.

  The spacecraft was trying to turn over, and it didn't look as if Casey had any idea what she was doing. The roar of the thrusters filled the cabin and then suddenly the thunder was gone. She must have found the cutoff switch and she'd now be looking for whatever constituted the brakes.

  The hills were coming up fast, and the only sounds were the wind whipping over the fuselage and the frantic pleas of his pilot.