The Artifact Competition (Approaching Infinity Book 1)

by Chris Eisenlauer

  “What’s down there, Mouse?” Mai asked.

  “I can’t really tell. Looks like it goes all the way to the bottom, though. Something’s down there.”

  “There must be some way down besides that,” Jav said as he and Mai came up beside her.

  Sessa was at the opposite wall now, examining what she found there. Under her light, myriad diamond flecks glittered brilliantly.

  This caught Mao’s eye and she sprung up from where she was to the right-hand wall. “Wow! That’s beautiful.”

  “I think they’re stars. Well, what the stars would have looked like if all of them were still burning.” Pointing her spike flare, she looked to the opposite wall and then back again. “I’m almost sure I’ve seen this pattern in the sky before. This one, too. And I’ll bet this,” she moved further down the length of the wall, “was what the sky looked like from that system.”

  “You really think so? It doesn’t look like they had any machines or anything,” Mao said scratching her head.

  “Maybe they didn’t need them,” Jav offered.

  “That’s impossible, Jav,” Mao said, rolling her eyes.

  Jav smiled and let it go. He turned his attention to Mai and joined her at the back of the room.

  “You find something?” he said.

  She cocked her head to one side and ran her hand along a waist-high length of chain that blocked off a small alcove at the back of the chamber. She released the last link from its hook on the right side and hung it on an identical hook to the left, next to the fixed end of the chain. “Let’s see what’s in here,” she said.

  Jav followed Mai into the alcove and both noticed that the floor seemed somewhat unstable. Scenes from some ancient tale were depicted all along the walls. The style was primitive. It was compelling, but more, it was appalling on some indistinct, base level and drew shudders from the two.

  “Hey, Sessa, come take a look in here,” Mai called out.

  As her last word finished, the clear tone of a small chime sounded. Everyone reacted to the sound instantly, stopping cold and attempting to identify its source or even the direction of its source. They were ready for anything, but nothing happened.

  Seconds passed and the chime rang again, as clearly and untraceably as before. Then the floor of the alcove started to drop. They were ready for anything, except maybe that. Neither Jav nor Mai lost their balance, but the descent was rapid, and, as soon as Mao and Sessa got to the threshold, the whole of the alcove, ceiling and all, had already sunk through the floor.

  Inside, Jav and Mai felt their momentum stop for a moment then the small chamber began to drop again, rotating as it did so. After turning a hundred and eighty degrees, all motion stopped again briefly, and again resumed, dropping them straight down about as far as the alcove was high. The open wall of the alcove now faced the opposite direction and opened to a passageway running left and right. Passing through another chain gate, Mai and Jav stepped into the hall.

  “It’s an elevator. Hey! Can you hear us?” Mai shouted. “It’s an elevator!”

  The chime sounded twice again, just like before, and then the chamber began to rise.

  “Hey! When it gets to the top again, get in!” Jav shouted. “Can you hear us up there?”

  Muffled shouts filtered down unintelligibly through thick stone. The two stared up the dark shaft, waiting. They started to worry when the elevator’s chime sounded faintly, twice in succession. Mai let out a pent-up sigh—she had been holding her breath unconsciously.

  Mao didn’t wait for the elevator to settle before leaping from its interior into her sister’s arms.

  “Hey, hey, Mouse, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

  Mao said nothing. She had buried her face in Mai’s breast, but now stared up into her sister’s eyes on the verge of tears. She sniffed once and regained her composure as Jav gripped her shoulder affectionately.

  Sessa walked out of the elevator, still eyeing the stories told in pictures on the walls, clearly unfazed by their brief separation.

  “Sessa, is there something wrong with the power sensor?” Jav said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It didn’t register anything when the elevator started.”

  She held the sensor up and examined it. “You’re right. I didn’t even notice. It’s still working, though.”

  “Why didn’t it react?”

  “I don’t know. It is working. I tuned out the spike flares, but if I reset it. . . There, see?” Three spike flares clearly showed on the sensor. “That is odd, though. I’ll keep a closer eye on it from now on.” She set it to ignore the spike flares again and increased its sensitivity.

  “Well, it looks like there’s only one way to go,” Mai said. The passage to the left ended abruptly, but how it ended was rather spectacular. A grotesque idol in relief seemed to be both stepping through a portal and caught in some stylized, religiously significant posture at the same time. The detail was fantastic but served only to disturb and somehow instill nausea. The sculpture was not of the same white marble as the rest of the construction, but a dark green, almost black stone that was strangely greasy to the touch. Its features were like nothing any of them had ever seen, and despite the light they had with them, the positioning of the nearly humanoid limbs and the bizarre shape of the overgrown head made it very difficult to appreciate what the sculptors had intended. Sessa thought it might have been an actual door, but it didn’t budge when she tried it.

  They took the right-hand passage and soon found it turning to the right again. From there the corridor narrowed and was not quite wide enough for two people to walk abreast. It sloped down gently, and all along the left wall, from roughly chest-height to the low ceiling, was a relief carved of the same green stone as the idol. Strange and fantastic scenes that may have included rituals and sacrificial rites were depicted there. It was most likely a running narrative, but if so even the gist of the story was unfathomable.

  As they came within sight of the corridor’s end, the floor became half as wide and opened to another passage below that went back the way they had come beneath the slope. Squeezing through the narrow aperture, this new passage soon spread out to the same dimensions as the one above, but this one was level. The band of relief sculpture had wrapped around and now continued as far ahead as they could see.

  They had covered about the same distance below as they had above when the corridor abruptly opened to their left. Here the green carvings stopped and a wide hall led to another elevator. Their light caught something beyond the elevator, though, and they felt compelled to investigate it.

  It was another statue in distended, life-like relief. This time, however, the image was reversed and they were looking on what might have been the rear of the idol above them. One scaly leg, adorned with terrific claws, pushed from the floor, sending the thing’s bulk halfway through the “portal”. A pair of boney and tattered wings hid most of the figure from their view, but its general effect on them was largely the same as that of the other.

  They went back to the elevator and soon gathered that it only went down. After conferring quickly, they all entered, awaited the chimes, and found themselves descending. When they came to a stop, the elevator opened to another hallway leading left and right. They would soon find that this pattern repeated itself through successive levels of the pyramid, the only differences being the increasing lengths of the corridors and the slightly altered positioning of the half-idols.

  When they had descended through four tiers, arriving at the third tier up from the ground, the pattern changed a little. After walking down the confined, sloping corridor about one third of the way, the wall to their right fell away revealing the open heart of the pyramid and all that rested within.

  They all stopped and bent over the half wall of the corridor to get a better look. The light didn’t reach all the way to the bottom, but it did show them a massive statue that was similar in design to those they had seen on the previous levels. This one was much,
much larger than the rest and crouched on a pedestal, with clawed hands resting on its knees. Its wings cut sharp angles and sharper shadows. Its head was bulbous, swollen and hung with countless feelers that almost seemed to move in the subtly shifting half-light.

  Before anyone knew what he was doing, Jav hurled his spike flare down into the depths. It struck with a loud crack as it penetrated stone and illuminated the interior from below. He stepped up onto the low partition and jumped down twenty-five meters, landing as lightly as a cat. He looked back up to the other three and shouted, “Are you guys coming?”

  They started jumping down themselves, and Jav proceeded to walk the floor. Leading down to the statue on three sides were wide stairs, most likely intended to be crude seating, but at the top of the stairs opposite the statue was something that no one could have expected and something for which there was no explanation. Just as at the top level there were two sets of three pillars leading into the pyramid, here were two sets of three pillars, which led out of the pyramid.

  Mai came up beside Jav as he stared through the opening. In the light of her spike flare, he looked at her uncertainly for a moment then stepped beyond the threshold.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. But she didn’t have to wait for an answer. She simply followed his gaze to what should have been the umbrella of rock high above them and saw instead an actual sky with familiar stars in their roosts. She joined him hesitantly, holding her spike flare out before her as a ward against danger.

  Both Mao and Sessa had grown curious. “Hey, what’s so interesting?” Sessa asked, but she too was silenced by the truth of what she saw.

  They all looked out from the top of the bottom-most tier of the pyramid, seeing by the light of the stars and the two spike flares they had with them that this was not the pyramid they had entered, but one which sat atop an impossibly high mountain, quite removed from the dark side of the planet—the glint of one of the satellite mirrors and the rise in temperature proved this.

  This pyramid was ruined, crumbled, little more than a foundation and the aperture through which they had come. But back through the opening, the pyramid was still intact, still rose up six more levels in the black depths below Karkosa.

  Everyone recognized the paradox. After staring in silent awe for a little longer, they reentered the pyramid, and attempted to turn their minds to things they could more easily grasp.

  Looming in the heart of the pyramid, the giant statue peered down as if reading the contents of a great, carved book that sat atop another pedestal before it. A narrow set of stairs led up that pedestal and Mao was now standing at its top with one foot upon the white, marble tome. She was surveying her surroundings from her perch when something underfoot caught her attention.

  “Hey, I think this opens.” She squatted down and started trying to shift things. “Someone come up here and help me.” Sessa went up the stairs and was startled by the sudden, harsh release of pressurized gas. Poles shot forth horizontally on the right and left. Each girl took hold of one and pulled but the capstone didn’t move.

  “Does yours turn?” Sessa said. “Try twisting it.”

  Mao followed Sessa’s instructions and they heard the sound of a bolt being released. They shared a foreboding look, but then Mao smiled impishly. “Catch, Jav!”

  He turned just in time to see the book-shaped capstone coming at him and he caught it. He thought it would be terribly disrespectful, even to the memory of a god long dead, to see something like that destroyed in its own temple. He was just letting out a sigh of relief when the sight of the statue shocked him so badly that he dropped the marble book to the floor where it broke into three pieces.

  For a split second, Jav could have sworn that the idol had turned towards him and roared in fevered but silent rebuke. He dropped to his knees and gripped his head with both hands. A sharp pain was needling through the center of his brain. He shook his head free of the pain and clear of the hallucination. The statue hadn’t moved. Maybe something in the musty air trapped in here for so long was starting to affect his mind.

  “Hey,” Mai said, coming to his side, “are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said standing up. Then to the other two he said, “Did you find something up there?”

  “There’s a real book here,” Sessa answered. “It’s almost as big as the carved one. . . was.”

  “A book, really? That would be great for Lili!” Jav blurted.

  “Mao’s just about got it free.”

  “Uh, Sessa?”

  “What is it, Jav?”

  “Is your power sensor still working?” he said.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Mai, I’m not hallucinating, am I?”

  “No, Jav, I see it, too.”

  “Something’s moving down here.”

  “Moving?” Sessa was confused.

  “Any reading?” Jav persisted.

  “Nothing! What’s going on? Oh! Mao, hurry!”

  Part of the book pedestal was separating from the main structure. Blocks of marble moved by themselves, animated by some force that somehow didn’t qualify as power—not normal power, anyway. Three pyramidal blocks shifted into an arrangement that gave them the appearance of a head and shoulders. One pyramid-shaped block, pointing at the ground, spun lazily and seemed to be providing the whole with motion. When it had finished assembling or reorganizing, it had the general shape of a “T” with thick, blocky arms that ended in mallet fists. The “head” rose and vomited out a bundle of spectral tentacles that writhed with unnatural and impossible life.

  “What the hell is that?” Jav said.

  “I don’t know!”

  “I don’t think it wants us touching its book!” Mai offered sharply.

  “It can’t be alive. Nothing here can!” Sessa insisted.

  It was rising now and Mai, fearing for Mao, leapt to protect her. Suddenly the thing really came to life. No longer sluggish, speed, power, and precision characterized it in an instant. The tentacles reached out for Mao, who held a book half as big as she was, but Mai grabbed her and jumped clear. Sessa attempted to strike, but had her hand caught in a tangle of feelers and received a blocky left cross to the side of her head instead. The feelers let her go as she slumped, her body almost completely limp.

  “Sessa!” Jav shouted.

  He jumped up to the top of the pedestal, saw that she was okay, and followed after the strange stone robot that now pursued the other two. While Jav was in mid air, the pyramidal head turned a hundred and eighty degrees back towards him and presented the translucent tentacles in jets and lashes. Small cuts opened up all over his body, but he successfully grabbed one appendage with his left hand then with his right struck it with all the AI force he could. It was like hardened jelly or solid rubber, but it broke where he hit it and small scintillant fragments showered down, turning to vapor before reaching the floor.

  A squealing cry raged throughout the chamber and Jav covered his ears. His momentum took him in an arc and he landed short of Mai and Mao’s position with his head clutched in his hands. He shot a look back to the giant idol. It still squatted there, but its back was stretched and it seemed to be reaching for him, its own tentacles fluttering madly through this second unheard but brain-felt cry, its eyes murderous and burning with hate.

  One of the stone robot’s hands reached for and recovered the book from Mao, but it wasn’t satisfied. It spun like a top on the floating, upside-down pyramid that was its base and backhanded Mao brutally. She raised her arms to defend herself but was sent crashing into the wall. Mai drove a powerful, AI-laden palm to the central block that would be the robot’s back. Cracks shot through the stone and dust jolted out from the block’s front, but otherwise the thing appeared unharmed. The pyramid head turned slowly towards Mai. She had hit it her hardest and now had nowhere to go.

  The vision of the idol was gone. What suddenly filled Jav’s mind was a sense of familiarity that he could not explain. He was suddenly reminded of having this
feeling once before, though, of seeing Mai and thinking that he had known her and loved her and lost her. This he felt all over again, but there was more. He had to save her this time. Last time he was too late, there was nothing he could do, nothing but rail impotently afterwards. Now he could act. Suddenly he was landing between Mai and the automaton. Tentacles engulfed him. One pierced his side and wriggled searchingly from the hole in his back, but the thing moved no further. Jav had caught its head between his hands—one hand on top and one below—in the dragon’s head claw. Dimly he was aware of Sessa’s power sensor finally springing to life, but he couldn’t consider that now. He had to stop this monster from hurting Mai. His Mai.

  He brought to bear all that he had learned from Hol, which was plenty, and the power sensor whined all the while. Sessa was crying, shouting for Jav to get away from the automaton. He twisted his hands with a terrible jerk that put each hand where the other had been, and finished by taking a deep, fiery breath as if he’d been deprived of oxygen for the last several minutes and could suddenly breathe again. The marble head first uniformly imploded, becoming roughly half its original size, spewing dust and fragments, then followed the course insisted upon by Jav’s hands, turning over, upside-down with a deafening crack. The tentacles were already gone, dissipated, but Jav front kicked the central block, sending the automaton in a straight line, almost imperceptibly fast, into the wall where it impacted violently and stayed, half buried in marble.

  Jav regarded the shrunken head still in his hands and discarded it disgustedly. He turned and knelt down to Mai. “Mai, are you all right?”

  She looked over his shoulder and saw that Mao was mostly unhurt, walking towards them. She nodded, shaking free the tears welling in her eyes, and wrapped her arms forcefully around Jav. The feeling of déjà vu largely past now, he was a bit surprised by her reaction, but after a moment of indecision he gently returned her embrace.

  Sessa picked up the head and held the power sensor to it. There was a faint reading but it was getting weaker and weaker and would soon be gone altogether. She frowned at the sensor then looked at Jav as she pursed her lips. She shook her head and spoke finally. “Don’t anyone quote me, but, uh, Jav I think that power source I was reading was you.”