Analog SFF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  A half hour later, they had removed enough of the vegetation to completely clear the face and the adjacent gray stone wall, recording it all as they went. Carson waved the workers back and bent to examine the face more closely. Its expression was, if human ideas of facial expression applied, one of somebody shouting or screaming. A thick stone rim outlined the wide circle of its mouth. Perhaps it was just laughing.

  He got down on his knees and examined the mouth more closely, probing the dirt still left in the recesses. He'd studied the construction of Verdigris tombs. If this was like others, there should be . . . there. As his fingers pressed in, he heard a muffled “clunk” and the round slab that formed the inner circle of the mouth settled backwards, just enough to clear the inner rim. Cool air wafted out of the gap.

  “Got it!” said Carson, triumph in his voice. “Here, help me roll it out of the way.”

  Brian and Gregor knelt down beside him and they all worked their fingers into the gap. It was awkward with the three of them together in the close space, but they managed to persuade the heavy stone to roll back behind the wall, leaving a clear opening. Carson used his omni to check for toxic gases; it was clear. He shone a light into the hole, then stuck his head in and looked around. In the middle of the small chamber was an oblong, roughly coffin-shaped bundle atop a raised platform. Small piles of artifacts—trinkets, primitive though artistic weapons, jewelry and the like—surrounded it. It was a body, possibly the tomb's sole occupant, except for a few bugs and spiders, but if Carson was lucky the raised platform itself might hold another. This was fantastic.

  “Wonderful! It hasn't been touched!” Carson called back. He crawled in a little further, then paused at an insistent warble from his omni.

  “What is it?” he heard Gregor ask from behind him.

  “Radiation warning. Hang on.” Carson pulled out his omni and checked the reading. The radiation was at very low level. “It's probably just radon build-up, or the rocks this thing is made from,” he said. Radon gas often accumulated in poorly ventilated structures, and rocks on this planet had a slightly higher concentration of natural radioactive elements than Earth. “A bit odd for this kind of rock, but it's a low reading, nothing to worry about,” he called back to his men. He turned off the omni's rad sensor to silence the warning.

  He backed out of the entrance and turned to the others. “All right, get the recorders in, I want it recorded from here first, then we'll go in and image everything in detail.”

  * * * *

  An hour later, they had begun to stack carefully documented artifacts outside the tomb entrance. Carson was alone inside the pyramid. The other two workers—there was barely room in the tomb for three people, four if you counted the original occupant—had stepped out for fresh air, taking some more artifacts with them. Carson was examining the slab that the body lay on when he heard a shout.

  “Dr. Carson! Dr. Carson, come out here please!” one of the men called from outside.

  “All right, all right, just a moment.” Carson crawled back through the entrance hole. “What is it?” he said as he poked his head out, but the answer was obvious.

  In the cleared area around the tomb there were a half-dozen men: his three, and three others he'd never seen before. What fixed his attention, though, was the very lethal-looking assault rifle pointed at him. Glancing about, he noticed the other automatic weapons the strangers were holding, aimed at him and his men. Worse, one of his own, Brian, was standing with the newcomers. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, “tomb raiders.”

  “Dr. Carson, I presume.” The tallest of the newcomers took a step forward. He was better dressed than the others, something Carson wouldn't have thought possible in bush wear. “Tomb raiders? You're the one who opened it. Myself, I prefer the term ‘art collectors.'”

  “Collectors? Dealers, more likely,” said Carson. “You know my name. Who are you?”

  The man paused, then grinned. “Just call me John Stephens.”

  Carson snorted at the name. “The real Stephens is better than you in two ways. Even though he was an amateur, he was a fine archaeologist.” John Lloyd Stephens had been pivotal in uncovering Mayan ruins in Mesoamerica three centuries earlier.

  The tall man, Stephens, raised an eyebrow. “And the other?”

  “He's dead.”

  Stephens frowned, angry. “That's enough. Come on, first slowly hand over your weapon, and then get up.”

  Carson reluctantly surrendered his pistol. The odds were not in his favor, but perhaps they'd leave his group unharmed if he cooperated. His group. He looked over at Brian, the turncoat. That's why he'd had his omni out. He must have sent a signal when they'd found it, and probably sent the picture too.

  Brian caught his glare. “Sorry, Dr. C.” he said with forced cheeriness. “They outbid you.”

  “I didn't realize you were up for bid,” growled Carson.

  “All right, cut out the chit-chat.” Stephens turned to his men. “Rico, Smith, keep them covered. Brian, search them. No weapons, no omnis. Come on, make it snappy.”

  Carson and his two loyal men grudgingly stood to, hands on their heads, while Brian patted them down. Carson had already turned over his gun; Brian relieved him of his omniphone. He patted down the others, taking their omnis, and from Gregor a rather wicked-looking sheath knife. He brought the goods over to Stephens.

  Carson sneaked a glance at a machete leaning against a nearby tree. If he could reach it and power it up while the others were occupied . . .

  One of Stephens’ men must have seen him look. The man strode over to the machete and yanked its cable from the power pack, then looked around and did the same with the other one.

  “Good catch, Rico,” said Stephens. “Okay, dispose of the weapons, smash the omnis and recorders.” He was taking no chances on communications.

  Carson started at this. “Hey, wait a minute, you can't—”

  “Carson.” Stephens waved his gun. “Of course we can.” He smiled, looking amused. “What's the matter, don't you make backups?”

  Of course Carson did. Every hour his omni backed itself up to the net. That wasn't the point. “I don't care about the omnis, they're low bandwidth. The recorders are high-resolution multispectral, and they're not backed up. The data is irreplaceable.”

  “Why should I care?”

  Good question. Carson thought fast. “You're joking, right? Those artifacts are worth far more to a collector if their provenance is established.”

  “True enough. So?”

  “Leave me the data and I can publish a report on the findings. Not the same quality or level of detail as if I had the artifacts to examine more closely. Can you at least leave me some?” It was worth a try. “If I publish on them, any collector will know they're the real thing and not something fabbed in a workshop.”

  “I can fake my own provenances. It wouldn't be the first time.”

  Fake? The thought disgusted Carson. “Professional journal articles? I don't think so. Think how much more you could get.” And you'll need me alive to write them, and if you need me alive, you'll leave my men alive.

  “You have a point.” Stephens didn't say anything else for a few moments, evidently weighing the options.

  “It's not like we have anything on the recordings to identify you,” Carson added.

  “Why would you publish? Why do me that favor?”

  “You know academia, ‘publish or perish.’ I'll get some credit for it.”

  “Okay.” Stephens turned to his men. “Go ahead and smash the omnis, but don't damage the recorders. We'll take them with us.”

  “What?”

  “Don't worry, Carson. If you behave yourselves we'll leave them at your ship. I just don't want anyone to get funny ideas about recording us before we're gone, or making calls until we're well away.”

  “What about leaving me some of the artifacts?” Carson was emboldened by this accession.

  “Don't push your luck. We'll leave
you the tomb. We can't carry that.”

  * * * *

  Stephens organized the gathering and packaging of the artifacts, then took a quick look around the interior of the tomb, noting a few more items to take.

  “Okay, last item. Rico, go cut a couple of branches and make a stretcher. We're taking the body.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  Carson's gut wrenched. “Leave that at least! What good will it do you?” That body was his main hope. If this tomb was unique, perhaps so was the occupant.

  “Are you kidding? Some collectors love this kind of stuff. Bit weird, if you ask me, but you didn't.”

  “Collectors!” Carson's anger overcame his caution. “That's all you care about? A few dollars for what could be priceless scientific information? Dammit, we don't know much about this species, or why this tomb is different. Let me—”

  “I'm not going to ‘let you’ anything, Carson. Your scientific information isn't priceless, it's worthless. Maybe you haven't noticed, stuck in your ivory tower—”

  “I don't—” Carson tried to interrupt.

  “Shut up!” Stephens gestured with his pistol. “You have no concept of the real world, you with your university benefactors paying your way. You think living out here on the frontier is easy? There's damn little to trade that Earth wants and is worth the effort to ship, and—”

  “But what about biologicals?” Carson said, thinking of the main local industry.

  “They have a trading lifetime of a couple of years before some bright boy in a lab figures out how to synthesize them or genetically modify them to grow on Earth. Look at what happened to Kakuloa: two years of a thriving trade in squidberry extract and then the bottom falls out when General Pharmaceuticals learns to synthesize it.

  “No, don't be stupid, doctor. You know that the trade in alien antiquities is about the only thing that brings hard currency out to the colonies. I'm doing my bit to support human expansion into T-space. You'd be more useful if you figured out where the Terraformers went, and if they're coming back. Where do a few scholarly reports on long-dead stone-age aliens get us?”

  Carson was taken aback. He knew the economic situation wasn't as bleak as Stephens, or whatever his real name was, painted it, but Carson recognized Stephens’ point. His anger ebbed. It was then he noticed that Stephens’ pistol was still pointed at him. Was there an edge of xenophobia in Stephens’ voice? What would he do if he thought there'd been spacefarers back when humans were barely into their own neolithic civilizations? “All right, damn it. Let me at least take a sample, do a DNA check.”

  Stephens looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “A bit out of your line, isn't that? But okay.” He lowered the pistol and turned to the body, looked it over, then broke off its equivalent of a little toe. He tossed it to Carson. “Here.”

  Carson's hands shook with another surge of anger, and he fumbled the catch. He swore. “I hope the bloody tomb is cursed, you bastard.”

  Stephens grinned. “None of them have been yet,” he said.

  Carson carefully bagged and pocketed the toe.

  Just then Rico came back with a makeshift stretcher, and they carefully transferred the body to it and maneuvered it out of the tomb.

  Carson looked around the chamber, now empty save for the raised stone platform in the center. “There's nothing left,” he said, although he knew that perhaps there might be.

  “We'll see,” said Stephens. “Brian, help me move the lid off of this.” He started to push on the slab that formed the top of the sarcophagus.

  Damn, this Stephens knew the tricks. Knew that sometimes the body on top is a guardian or decoy for the important one inside.

  Stephens and Brian had shoved the lid a couple of feet to the side, and Stephens shone his light in. “Damn, it's empty. What's the point of an empty crypt?”

  “What?” Carson looked in and saw by the light of Stephens’ torch that it was indeed empty, nothing but dirt and a few loose stones. Now that's interesting. Perhaps the body is special.His pulse quickened but he kept silent.

  “We're done here. Everybody out,” Stephens said.

  Outside Stephens turned to his gang, who had finished packaging the artifacts for travel. “Gather up the recorders.”

  “You promised to leave those!” Carson protested, wanting to keep Stephens distracted.

  “Oh, don't worry, doctor. I told you, if you're good and give us a head start, I'll leave them at your ship. Now, you three,” he pointed to Carson, Gupta, and Gregor, “you're going into the tomb.”

  “What? We're not going back in there.” None of them wanted to just disappear in this jungle.

  “Don't worry, I'm not sealing you in. But you won't be getting out quickly either.” He turned and shouted, “Rico!”

  “Yes, boss?”

  “You stay here and give us the usual head start. If anyone pokes his nose out of that hole before that, shoot it off.”

  “Got it, boss,” Rico said and grinned. He picked up his rifle and found a tree to lean on. It was about twenty meters from the tomb; too far to rush, but close enough to make shooting easy.

  Carson was convinced he'd do it, too. He knows his stuff, Carson thought. That's a pity.

  It took a few more minutes as the bad guys gathered up packs, double-checked for anything left behind, and herded the prisoners into the tomb; then they were ready to go.

  “Hey!” Carson called from within the crypt. “You will leave the recorders, right?”

  “Don't worry,” Stephens called back, amused. “You will write a report, won't you, Dr. Carson?”

  Carson just cursed.

  “Back inside, doctor!” Rico raised his weapon to the ready position for emphasis.

  * * * *

  Carson waited ten minutes, then tried hailing. “Rico? You out there?”

  There was no answer, so Carson took off his hat and extended it out of the entrance. He heard the crack of a gunshot and felt a tug on his hat. He snatched it back inside. There was a bullet hole through it.

  Five minutes after that, Carson heard footsteps fading back along the trail. He edged toward the tomb entrance, and there came another shot. This one sounded more distant, probably a last warning shot, but Carson waited five more minutes before he stuck his hat out again. It drew no response this time.

  Sure that they'd gone now, Carson led the others out of the crypt. “Gregor, get back to the ship. Bring back a spare omni and a recorder. We should see if there's anything left in there.”

  “I'll go,” said Gupta. “I want to check my ship.” At Carson's nod, he took off at a quick jog.

  “Something left? With us crowded in there?” asked Gregor.

  “It was dark. Maybe in the sarcophagus.”

  “That was empty. If somebody took a body, why leave everything else looking untouched?”

  “There may never have been another body.” Carson hoped there had not. It would increase the odds that the body Stephens had stolen was special, and Carson had a sample of that. “But who knows what alien motives might be?”

  “Fair point.” Gregor changed the subject. “Are you really going to publish a paper on these findings?”

  Carson's jaw clenched. He growled the words out. “Sure. In a year or two. Let Stephens stew about that.” He picked up a small branch from the ground and worried it, twisting the bark off. “The first thing I'll do is hand a copy of the data over to law enforcement. If any of those artifacts ever show up, maybe they can be traced back to him. Bastard.” He whipped the branch against a nearby tree trunk.

  Gregor shook his head. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.” He paused a moment. “You realize if you ever cross paths again he'll have it in for you.”

  “I hope we do cross paths again. As long as I see him first.” With a jerk of his arms, Carson tore the branch in half and tossed the pieces aside.

  * * * *

  Gupta returned about thirty minutes later. “The ship is okay. Here's the gear.” He handed the recorder
and omni to Carson. “So, why are we still here?”

  “I wanted to check it completely before we left. Stephens may have missed something.”

  He got down and crawled in through the opening. Once again, as he got inside the omni sounded its warning, surprising him. I thought I turned that off. Oh, right, this is the one Gupta brought back from the ship. Stephens had destroyed the other.

  “Are you getting radiation again, Dr. Carson?” Gregor called from outside. He must have heard the warning.

  “Yes, which is odd. Radon should have dissipated by now.” Carson checked the sensor setting. “Definitely some slight radiation inside, though.” He held the omni near the roof of the chamber, then near the floor. “It's stronger on the floor, so it's not the rock that the pyramid is made of.” He moved over to the sarcophagus. Near the edge of the lid the radiation reading jumped again. “More here. Very interesting.”

  He called back to the others. “It's safe enough. Low level. Come on in, I'd like some help with this slab.”

  They moved the sarcophagus lid to one side, and Carson examined the interior. He leaned in and swept the omni back and forth. Near one corner the radiation reading spiked. Looking closer he found a small, flat object, broken along one side, the edge looking crushed. Dirt covered it and it had looked just like a rock in the beam from Stephens’ flashlight.

  Carson double-checked that the radiation wasn't harmful and picked the object up. It was half of a rounded square, with markings and what might be inlaid gemstones on one side. Carson examined the broken edge. Was there something metallic in there? He was about to brush the dirt off, then remembered the radiation and stopped.

  “What is it, doc?” asked Gupta.

  “I'm not sure. Some kind of talisman perhaps. Looks like it got caught on the edge of the sarcophagus, then damaged when the lid was put down. There must be dust from it scattered around the floor.”

  “But radioactive?”

  “Not that unusual in the rocks on this planet. It might be these gems. I'll know more when I have it analyzed.” He bagged it and put it in a different pocket from the DNA sample. He checked the other pocket to be sure the toe was still there.