If Piemur and Jancis were preoccupied with each other the next morning at the dawn breakfast that Master Robinton had ordered, the others were far too intent on arriving on time at the Plateau to notice. D’ram would convey the Harper, Piemur, and Jancis to the ADMIN building. Lytol had declined to go along.
‘I think he’s noticeably fading,’ Robinton murmured to D’ram as they strode to Tiroth’s clearing. ‘Jaxom remarked on it to me.’
‘He’s fine, Robinton, really he is. It’s just that like all of us, he can’t do as much as he used to,’ D’ram replied, his expression sad. ‘Jaxom’s news about a second child cheered him.’
‘It cheered me, too. Ah, Tiroth, you’re very good to haul us to and fro,’ the Harper said, giving the elderly bronze an affectionate clout as he climbed up to sit between the neck ridges. ‘Hand Jancis up to me, Piemur. I’ll see she’s safe. You can hold on to me as tightly as you wish, my dear.’
‘You keep your hands to yourself, Master,’ Piemur said in a mock growl, ascending first and then assisting Jancis to the position behind him. He ignored the protests from his stiff muscles and tender bruises.
‘Where’s your respect for my age, my position?’ the Harper demanded, laughing as he mounted just in front of the journeyman.
‘Where it always has been, Master,’ Piemur assured him heartily. ‘Where I can keep my eye on you!’
D’ram was chuckling as he mounted, and Tiroth’s powerful upward leap brought Jancis’s arms clutching at Piemur’s. He covered her hands on his chest with his, very pleased to feel her pressing so tightly against him. They all had a good view of the Dawn Sisters shining in the morning sky before Tiroth took them between.
The Sisters were still in sight when they arrived at the Plateau and skimmed up from the landing strip to the dark shadows of the mounds and the spot where the light of many glowbaskets told them the excavation crew was all ready to go. Indeed, they learned shortly, Master Fandarel had already outlined the area to be dug and the first shovelsful had been removed.
‘Master Robinton, D’ram, good morning. Jancis, Piemur. We calculate a full span’s encrustation. I also deemed it wise to remove the tiles, so obviously a temporary cover. Last night I compared them with some still in place on the flying ships, and I believe that it is the same material, though none of the ships seem to be missing any significant number. That confirms my theory that originally there were more than three ships.’
‘I think that’s likely,’ Master Robinton agreed, shivering a bit in the cool dawn air. ‘The fire-lizards’ images always suggest more than three. Twice that many, and even with six the labor of transporting all those things from the Dawn Sisters to the surface here would have been astounding.’
Someone brought stools and hot klah so that Master Robinton and D’ram could be made comfortable while the digging progressed. Jancis and Piemur stood to one side, sipping at the klah. Piemur tried to suppress the irritation he felt that their private little dig had turned so official. Jancis was rather more subdued than he liked. This was her find, her hunch. She should be directing the work. True, she could not really expect to take precedence over her grandfather, but they all seemed to have forgotten that the whole effort was due to her discovery of the ancient drawing film. It had been one thing to ask Jaxom to help, but not the whole bloody Plateau. The lumps on his head began to throb.
As the sun came up, he realized that someone had worked hard during the night to strip the tiles from the roof. The panels stood completely clear, a long finger-length above the original roof. Some of the cladding remained on the walls, but a trench had been cut through the soil, right down to the tar-based material with which the ancients had paved the walks and roadways between their buildings.
Suddenly a cheer went up. Grabbing Jancis by the hand, Piemur pushed past the crowd clustering in a loose circle about the dig area. Master Fandarel and Master Robinton had been ushered to the newly uncovered door. It was not one of the common sliding doors of the ancients but had instead two equal-sized panels.
‘I beg your pardon, Master Fandarel and Master Robinton, but this building was Jancis’s hunch, and she should by rights go first!’ Piemur heard Jancis gasp in astonishment and felt her pull against his grip. He ignored the bemused expressions of the two Master-craftsmen as he hauled Jancis right up to the doors. He heard Master Esselin’s indignant exclamation and Breide’s acid comment about harper arrogance, and the ripple of surprise passing back through the small crowd. Jancis tried to pull him back, tried to free her hand.
‘You know, you are right, Piemur,’ Robinton said, stepping to one side. ‘We have usurped Jancis’s prerogative.’
‘After you, Jancis,’ Fandarel said. He spoke with the utmost courtesy but looked thoughtfully at Piemur.
Seeing that Jancis was too dismayed to act, Piemur stepped beside her, looking for the method of opening the door. He could see none, but there was no way that he would have turned back to the Smith for assistance. He scrutinized the door more carefully. There was an unusual hinge arrangement, but no knob or latch. He put one hand on an obvious doorplate and pressed. There was the resistance of long unmoved parts, then dust and ash showered down from the gap between the doors. He pushed with both hands, and the door began to move inward. Jancis rallied from her embarrassment sufficiently to lend her weight, and suddenly the door swung completely inward, marking its path in the fine dust that had filtered inside over the Turns.
Piemur pulled the other side back, opening the doors wide to the fresh morning breeze blowing softly up the Plateau and swirling the dust in the corridor. Then he turned around, gesturing for one of the glowbaskets. Soon the sun would bring light into the hallway, but he did not want to delay a single moment. A judicious two paces behind Jancis and Piemur, Masters Fandarel and Robinton entered.
‘A corridor to the right,’ Piemur said, holding the glowbasket up in his left hand while he kept his right one firmly around Jancis’s wrist. She was not resisting him any more, he thought, grinning to himself. She just needed to assert herself a little more and no one was going to do her out of her rights, not while he was around.
Now that he was making the first footprints the ashy floors had felt in who knew how many Turns, he was beginning to be appalled at his own brashness, but he had gotten away with it—again. He grinned. He turned to his right again, and with the added illumination from the glowbaskets carried by Robinton and Fandarel, he could see more tiling, whitely gleaming at the end of the short hallway. ‘They sure weren’t taking any chances with aivas.’
‘There is an obvious door,’ Master Fandarel remarked. He started to move in front of them, then paused and gestured for the two younger people to continue.
Jancis shot Piemur a look of wretched consternation, but he just grinned at her, squeezing her hand. ‘You found it—you get to see it first!’
The hall was wide enough for all of them to stand abreast at the reinforced wall. The door had a knob, and when Jancis declined to touch it, Piemur had no hesitation. It took all his strength to turn it, for time and dust had clogged the mechanism, but with both hands and a mighty effort, he disengaged the latch. The door did not open inward, as he had half expected, but outward.
‘There is little dust on this floor,’ the smith remarked, peering over their heads at the scene in front of them.
‘There’s a red light on a cupboard,’ Piemur observed, feeling his skin crawl with amazement.
‘And more light!’ Jancis said in a timorous voice.
‘In fact, the whole place is lighting up,’ Piemur added, feeling his feet rooted in the doorway as strange and unfamiliar sensations coursed through him. This place had not been emptied. He had never seen such cabinets and closets before, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were right for this room. For once, the brash young harper was touched with awe and reverence. This was just the sort of place they had all been hoping to find.
‘The red light illuminates letters,’ Master Robinton said in a hushed voice a
s he looked over Jancis’s shoulder.
‘Remarkable, truly remarkable!’ The Smith’s voice was no less reverent.
The growing light made visible some of the details within the room: the worktables on either side of the door, and the two high stools neatly placed under them. On the wall opposite the door was a large framed surface, tinted slightly green with little red letters blinking on and off in the lower left-hand side. A chair, on a pedestal with five spokes in its base, stood in front of it and the slanting workspace. It seemed unadorned until Piemur noticed the regular squares—lighter in color than the surrounding surface—set in ranks and odd-looking protuberances in a series of rows to the right. Above them, to the right of the screen, were slots and more dial faces, one of which showed a steady green light and a needle swinging slowly from the left to a central position.
The red lights, which read panels charging, stopped blinking and settled to a firm color that gradually changed to green as the lighting—from whatever mysterious source it emanated—continued to brighten. Suddenly a quiet blip startled all of them, and a new message blazed from the left-hand corner: AIVAS FUNCTION RESUMED.
‘That corner says “AIVAS,” ’ Piemur said excitedly, pointing to the obvious.
Robinton had turned to view the corridor walls and recognized familiar artifacts. ‘Charts,’ he said.
‘Please state ID and access code! Your voiceprints are not on record.’
The voice startled all of them, and Jancis clutched at Piemur.
‘Who said that?’ Fandarel demanded, his voice booming in the confines of the room.
‘State ID and access code, please!’ The voice repeated, sounding slightly louder.
‘That’s not a human voice,’ Master Robinton said. ‘It has no real resonance, no inflection, no timbre.’
‘State the reason for this intrusion.’
‘Do you understand what he’s saying, Master Robinton?’ Piemur asked. The words sounded familiar, but the accent was too strange for him to comprehend the meaning.
‘I have the feeling that I ought to,’ the Harper admitted ruefully.
‘Unless ID and access codes are given, this facility will close down. Its use is restricted to Admiral Paul Benden…’
‘Benden, it said Benden!’ Piemur cried excitedly.
‘… Governor Emily Boll…’
‘Boll, that’s another recognizable word,’ Robinton said. ‘We recognize the words “Benden” and “Boll.” We do not understand what you are trying to tell us.’
‘… Captain Ezra Keroon…’
‘Keroon. It knows Keroon. Do you know Telgar?’ The Smith could not contain himself any longer. ‘Surely it must know Telgar.’
‘Telgar, Sallah, married to Tarvi Andivar, later known as Telgar in memory of his wife’s sacrifice…’
‘All I understand is “Telgar,” ’ Fandarel said. He raised his voice unthinkingly, in a frustrated attempt to encourage comprehension. ‘Telgar, we understand. Keroon we understand—that’s another big hold. Boll is a Hold; Benden is a Hold. Do you understand us?’
There was a long pause and they all watched with complete fascination as a range of symbols and, occasionally, letters rippled across the panel in front of them, accompanied by a variety of sounds, mainly blips and beeps and odd whirrings.
‘Did I say something wrong, Robinton?’ Fandarel asked, his voice an awed whisper again.
‘Are you all right down there?’ Master Esselin’s plaintive query reached them where they stood bunched together in the doorway.
‘Of course we are,’ Fandarel bellowed back to the Masterminer. ‘Clear those windows. Let some light in. Glammie has my diagrams. Work from that and leave us alone!’
‘New letters,’ Piemur said, digging the Mastersmith in the ribs to attract his attention. ‘Running… Running? E…M…E…R…G…E…N…’
‘Emergency,’ the harper guessed before the C and Y appeared. He grinned with pleasure.
‘P-R-O-G-R-A-M—program? The words we understand, but what do they mean?’ Piemur asked.
‘The lights are quite bright now,’ Fandarel said cheerfully. ‘Very curious.’ He stepped inside the room, his initial surprise having worn off, and the others followed hastily. ‘There are buttons on the wall.’ He flicked one, and a soft whirring noise began. The fine film of dust on the floor began to shift: the closeness of the air freshened. Fandarel flicked the button again, and both the noise and the stirring of air ceased. He flicked it on again, murmuring happily to himself. ‘Well, this aivas of yours is an ingenious creature,’ he commented, smiling down at Jancis. ‘And efficient.’
‘We still don’t know what an aivas is!’ Piemur remarked.
‘AIVAS is an acronym for Artificial Intelligence Voice Address System,’ the voice intoned ‘To be precise, a Mark 47A, programmed to interface the main computer storage banks of the Yokohama and the settlement on Pern.’
‘Pern—I understood Pern,’ Robinton said. Then, enunciating very clearly and projecting his rich baritone voice, he added, ‘From where are you speaking, aivas?’
‘This system is programmed for voice address. State your name. Please.’
‘It sounds testy, but I think I’m getting the hang of its accent. My name is Robinton. I am Masterharper of Pern. This is Fandarel, who is Mastersmith in Telgar Hold. With us are Journeywoman Jancis and Journeyman Piemur. Do you understand me?’
‘Lingual shifts have occurred, Robinton. Modification of the language program is now required. Please continue to speak.’
‘Continue to speak?’
‘Your speech patterns will be the basis for the modification. Please continue to speak.’
‘Well, Masterharper, you heard it,’ Piemur said, rapidly recovering his composure. ‘Here, sit down.’ He pulled the chair from under the desk, brushed the seat off, and made a flamboyant gesture.
Master Robinton looked aggrieved as he sat. ‘I always thought the Harper Hall had succeeded very well in keeping the language pure and unadulterated.’
‘Oh, aivas just doesn’t understand us!’ Piemur murmured reassuringly. ‘Everyone understands you. That thing,’ he said, airily dismissing the aivas, ‘doesn’t even use words we know.’
‘This is all very interesting,’ Fandarel said, peering at every surface, poking a finger into the slots, and cautiously touching the various knobs, buttons, and toggles. ‘Very interesting. Much less dust has filtered into this room. No doubt due to the tile layer.’
‘Please do not attempt to use the touch-screen controls. That function is now deactivated.’
Fandarel pulled his hands back like a small boy caught reaching for bubbly pies. The slanting board, which had been glowing amber, went dark again. Jancis had gingerly settled on one of the stools, rolling her eyes around the room and trying not to look at the screen.
‘What’s happening down there?’ Breide called.
‘A modification of the language program has been necessary,’ Piemur called back. ‘Master Fandarel has it all well in hand, Breide.’
‘Four persons are observed to occupy this room, but only three voices have been registered. Will the fourth person speak?’
Jancis looked around apprehensively. ‘Me?’
‘You are requested to speak a full sentence.’
‘Go on, Jancis,’ Piemur urged. ‘I don’t think it will bite you, and a feminine voice will give it a new perspective on life here.’
‘But I haven’t the faintest idea what one says to… a disembodied voice.’
‘Any speech will suffice. The difference in resonance and timbre has been noted. To assist the program, question: You are a female person.’
‘Yes, she is a female person,’ Piemur repeated.
‘The female person is asked to answer for a voiceprint reading.’
Jancis burst out laughing at the surprise on Piemur’s face, for the reproof, despite the uninflected tone, was unmistakable.
‘You should see your face, Piemur.’
‘Well, at least you can laugh about it,’ Piemur said. ‘Thank you… sir, whatever. How should you be addressed?’
‘This is an artificial intelligence voice address system. It does not require personification.’
‘Does artificial mean man-made?’ Robinton asked.
‘That is correct.’
‘The men who built the Dawn Sisters?’
‘Reference to Dawn Sisters is unknown. Please explain.’
‘The three metallic objects in the sky overhead are known as the Dawn Sisters.’
‘You refer to the spaceships Yokohama, Buenos Aires, and Bahrain.’
‘Spaceships?’ Fandarel asked, turning to stare at the panel with its green blinking legend.
‘Spaceships, life-supported vehicles that travel in the vacuum inaccurately referred to as “space.” ’
‘Do the spaceships still support life?’ Fandarel’s eyes were wide, his usually expressionless face betraying a passionate avidity that surprised even Robinton.
‘Not at the present reading. All systems are on hold. Bridge pressure is .001 standard atmosphere, or 0.1 KP. Interior temperature reads minus twenty-five degrees Celsius.’
‘I don’t know what it’s talking about,’ Fandarel said, collapsing on to the other stool, his face a study of terrible disappointment.
‘Hey!’ Jaxom came running down the hall. ‘No, that’s all right, Breide, I’ll just go right in. I’m expected.’ He entered the room, slightly breathless. ‘I thought you’d wait for me, Piemur, Excuse me, Master Fandarel, Master Robinton. What is this?’ He began to assimilate the oddities of the room, the lights, the ventilation, and the expressions of his friends.
‘This is an artificial intelligence voice address system…’
‘Here we go again,’ Piemur said irreverently. ‘You do realize, Master, that here is the key you’ve been hoping to find. A talking key. I think if you can just ask it the right questions, you’ll find out all the answers. Even some you didn’t know you needed to know.’
‘Aivas,’ Master Robinton said, straightening his shoulders and directing his next remark to the green light. ‘Can you answer my questions?’
The Renegades of Pern Page 38