She placed her hands on the flat rock just above the waterline and pulled herself up, the way that she used to pull herself out of the full-grav pool on her father’s starbase. She scraped her right wader against the stone, leaving a dank chalky mark.
She wasn’t sure if that mark would be permanent or not. Damage was easy in these caverns—hell, it was easy everywhere in the ancient city, which had been untouched until her team had uncovered it five years before.
It had taken a lot of work, but she’d managed to keep the city quiet for two years. Finally, she needed more help, so she advertised on college boards all over the sector. She got dozens of graduate students, and a handful of post-docs. The post-docs were still here, but the graduate students cycled in and out like the itinerant students they were, bringing the news of the ancient city of Denon into the mainstream community.
Fortunately, she had published her early research before the ad. She would have to do the same thing with the caverns. But not until she explored them all and learned what other treasures were here.
She pulled her other knee up, making a second mark, then placed her hand on the side of the arch. This time, she didn’t leave a mark. But the stone was cold, even through her glove. She was going to have to sit in the sun for a long time to get this chill out of her system.
Still, she wasn’t quite ready to leave. Before she walked to the old path that led to the steps, she peered through the arch.
She had hoped to get inside that next cavern before her time elapsed, and she hadn’t made it. But she had learned something. The floor slanted upwards, so the next series of caverns—if, indeed, there was a series—would not yet be underwater.
The light from her miner’s helmet shone inside, reflecting off the natural white walls. She didn’t see inky blackness below, which was how the water manifested itself in the darkness—even when the water had taken on the sludge from the walls.
A pristine cavern—maybe the last pristine cavern—before the underwater work began.
3
The air was drier here than Meklos expected, and the sunlight brighter. He’d never seen sunlight this bright. When he’d asked Chavo Grennoble, the young man the archeologists had sent to lead the team up the correct path, Chavo had said that the brightness was a change in perception, which came because Meklos had so recently been on a ship.
Meklos had been on many ships before landing planetside, and he’d never experienced light like this before. But he said nothing, even though his own second in command Phineas Aussiere gave him an odd look.
Meklos had been on jobs filled with academics before. They always condescended to him, assuming he was stupid because he preferred a physical job to sitting in some classroom letting someone else tell him what to think.
He adjusted his pack along his shoulders. In it, he had an automatic tent, rations for the next month, and more equipment than he probably needed. He hadn’t been able to assess the job from the starbase, so he had brought collapsible bots, motion detectors, sound detectors and a variety of cameras. He also had sixteen self-assembling laser rifles, several Grow-it grenades, and one giant sky cannon.
Even though everything was in its inert or collapsed state, he was still carrying thirty-five kilos on his back. He carried the greatest weight because he had the sky cannon, but his team’s packs weren’t much lighter.
The kid, Chavo, was scrambling up the path like a mountain goat, and the entire team was keeping up with him. Meklos knew for a fact that the kid wouldn’t have been able to walk this path with thirty-five kilos on his back.
Meklos thought of asking the kid how they’d gotten their equipment over this peak, then realized that the kid wouldn’t know. From what little Meklos had learned before agreeing to the job, the project started ten years before with an examination of the Spires of Denon, and then turned into an excavation of the entire ancient city nestled in the center of the mountain itself.
As they got closer to the peak, the air grew warmer. Meklos had thought it would be colder. On inhabited worlds, most mountains, particularly those this tall, had a snow pack at the top.
In fact, he had thought this mountain—called Denon’s Secret—had a snow pack. From the valley where they’d left the ship, he had noted the reddish-brown dirt slowly turning white near the Spires. He had naturally assumed snow.
But no snow could survive in this heat. If he had known it was going to be this warm, he would have worn some environmental gear.
The ground beside him was turning white, which was how he knew they were nearing the top. From this angle, it was nearly impossible to look at the Spires. They loomed above him, large and imposing.
Their shadows crisscrossed the path, like the shadows of branches in a forest. But unlike the shadows of branches, these shadows were huge. He would step out of a shadow into the sunlight, and walk for several meters before stepping into another shadow.
The Spires weaved and bent into each other, adding at least four more kilometers to the top of the mountain. As he neared the peak, he couldn’t tell if this mountain was old and rounded with time or if—in some distant past—the mountaintop had blown off.
If it had blown off, then he was climbing a volcano which unnerved him slightly. He’d worked two separate jobs near active volcanoes and their rumblings kept him awake at night.
But nothing in his research claimed Denon’s Secret was an active volcano. If it had been, the Spires would not have survived. The groundquakes would have shattered them.
The team had nearly reached the Spires when Chavo stopped. He extended his spindly arms as if he were some religious figure leading his followers to the promised land.
“Before we go farther,” he said, “I need to tell you the rules of the Spires. I’m sure that Gabrielle or someone else below will reiterate, but since we’re going to go right past them, I figured I’d better say something.”
“Could’ve said it at the base,” someone muttered behind Meklos.
“He thinks we’re too dumb to remember for that long,” someone else answered, echoing Meklos’s thoughts.
Chavo didn’t seem to hear or if he did, the comments didn’t embarrass him—probably because he believed them to be true.
He glanced behind him, then swept his hand toward the upper part of the mountain.
“The Spires are manmade,” Chavo said. “They’re handcarved. They’ve been treated with something—we don’t know what—that has allowed it to remain in place for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. In addition to being bent and formed by hand, the Spires are also etched.”
Meklos didn’t know that. He raised his head a little, and saw the edges of the Spires coming out of the white dirt.
He couldn’t imagine that sort of painstaking work. He wasn’t even sure how the creators made it. Did they begin at the top and add pieces as they went along, until they had the full-sized Spires? Then did they take them from whatever workshop they’d used and attach them to the mountainside?
The technology needed to do this seemed beyond the ancients. But the ancients had built and forgotten more technology than he would ever know. After all, geneticists proved beyond any doubt that this sector was colonized by people from Earth, just like the stories said. The DNA matches were complete.
Which meant that everyone in the sector had common ancestors, at least once upon a time. That time was so long ago that civilizations rose and fell, knowledge was lost, knowledge was gained, and wars were fought, then forgotten.
Just like the history of colonization had been forgotten.
“So,” Chavo said, “because they’re unusually delicate, don’t touch the Spires. We’re afraid that the oils from your fingertips could harm the coating.”
“Why?” someone muttered. “Because of where we’ve been?”
“They don’t know where we’ve been,” someone else said. “That’s what they’re afraid of.”
“Actually,” Chavo said loudly—since he’d clearly heard that, “none of u
s is allowed to touch. We’ve seen them forever and examined them for ten years, and we still can’t touch. We can’t figure out how to study them without dismantling one, and that would be a crime.”
Not to mention that it might undermine the entire Spire system.
“So we take readings and try to examine with what equipment we have. Even that we have to be careful with. We don’t dare use powerful equipment near the Spires. We’re too afraid to damage them. What we’re hoping for is that we’ll find some pieces in the city below, and then we can do a proper study, but so far, we haven’t found anything.”
It almost sounded like a tourist guide spiel, except that Meklos knew tourists never came here.
He found it curious that they couldn’t figure out anything about the Spires. The lack of knowledge, even after a decade of study, made him realize that all those precautions the academics had presented him with were just that: Precautions. They were based on guesses, not actual knowledge.
He wondered what they all would think if they knew how many weapons he was bringing into their stronghold. He would wager that they would disapprove.
They were probably taking so long on this dig because they couldn’t use some of the normal tricks of the trade—sonic cleaners set on a level for delicate work and large equipment to carry dirt and debris out of this area.
“Is this the only path?” Meklos asked.
“It’s the only one we use,” Chavo said.
“That wasn’t my question,” Meklos said. “We’re here to protect you and your dig. We need to know if there are other ways to access it.”
Chavo glanced over his shoulder again, as if someone were watching him. As he turned back, he bit his lower lip.
“There are lots of paths over the peak and through the Spires. This is the only one that is accessible.”
“To whom?” Meklos asked. “To your people? Or to machinery? Or to anyone with climbing experience?”
Chavo shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. This is the only one I’ve ever used.”
“How long have you been here?” Meklos asked.
“Two years,” Chavo said. “My post-doc focuses on the architecture of the city of Denon as it evolved—”
“Couldn’t you study that from some library somewhere?” Phineas asked, obviously unable to contain his contempt any longer.
“I’m an archeologist, and an art historian,” Chavo said with no little bit of pride. “This is an area of study that combines both of my disciplines.”
“Well, you’re testing our discipline,” Meklos said. “We’re wearing thirty-five kilograms on our backs and it’s hot up here. We’d like to get to that city, find where we’re going to camp, and eat a little something.”
“No kidding,” said one of the voices from the back.
Chavo looked at the pack on Meklos’s back as if seeing it for the first time.
“Sorry,” he said. “You might have to take that off as we cross the peak. The arch beneath this part of the Spires is pretty narrow.”
Meklos frowned. Obviously, then, the original teams hadn’t used this path to lug their equipment in.
Chavo climbed ahead of them, waiting near the arch, which barely reached the top of his head. When Meklos joined him, Chavo pointed up. “Your pack gonna hit that?”
“Of course not,” Meklos said, but he paused anyway, not because he was uncertain, but because he wanted to get a good look at the Spires up close.
The arch wasn’t a true arch. Instead, it was part of the weave. Several branches came together at this point. Two twisted above Meklos to form an even larger patter. Two more branched in from the sides, giving the arch itself a four-point base.
The trail went below that base.
“I’m going to make sure the others won’t hit it,” Chavo said. “So go ahead.”
“They’ll be fine,” Meklos said.
Chavo looked nervously at the rest of the team, climbing single-file behind Meklos, then back at Meklos.
Meklos raised his eyebrows. “After you,” he said.
Chavo swallowed, then nodded. He clearly didn’t want to go first, but he didn’t see any choice.
Meklos smiled to himself. The kid was finally becoming intimidated.
Chavo walked under the arch, then eased himself down the side of the mountain. The trail had to have gotten steep there. Meklos made a mental note of that.
He followed, going slowly, not because he was afraid of hitting the arch, but because he wanted to look at it as he passed.
Chavo wasn’t kidding—the Spires had etchings. So far as Meklos could see, each etching was different. Some appeared to be characters, like letters or numbers, and others were drawings. He noted one as he passed, a woman standing beneath this very arch, or something quite similar to it.
He only had to hunch slightly as he walked through the arch. He had plenty of clearance. Even if he hadn’t, his pack would have flattened itself against his back to avoid touching anything. It was a design feature he neglected to tell Chavo.
The kid didn’t need to know everything.
Once Meklos got through the arch, the path turned sharply to the right. That was why Chavo had braced himself as he came through. There were more parts to the arch, some actually flattened before Meklos, like a floor.
The path swerved to avoid all of that.
The floor had etchings as well, but he couldn’t see them clearly from the path.
What surprised him was that they weren’t covered with dust or dirt. Just one day on this mountaintop should have kept that floor covered in the whitish material that surrounded them.
He swerved with the path, then walked down four steps. Chavo was waiting for him on a stone platform, one that was not part of the Spires. Meklos stopped beside Chavo, then looked up the mountainside. His team was coming through, one at a time, each examining the Spires as they walked, each showing the same amount of curiosity he had.
“The city’s just down there,” Chavo said, with no small amount of pride.
Meklos looked. The city sprawled below them as if it had always been exposed to the sun, as if teams of archeologists hadn’t uncovered it in the past five years.
Some of the dirt remained along the edges, more, it seemed to Meklos, to prevent climbers from going through the Spires the wrong way than as any integral part of the dig.
But the dirt did show how deeply the city had once been buried.
It filled the hollow in the mountain. White buildings, some small, and several quite large, scattered before him. They glimmered in the sunlight.
He realized then that some of the brightness had come from the reflected light off the white substance on the side of the mountain. Add to that the city itself, and his eyes actually hurt.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Chavo asked.
“Astonishing,” Meklos said, and meant it. He had seen a lot of amazing things in his career, but never anything like this.
“Wait until you see it up close,” Chavo said.
Meklos frowned. He had heard about the ancient city of Denon in school—everyone had. So many of this sector’s myths and stories had come from here.
The city itself had survived several sieges.
As he looked at it now, though, the idea of surviving a siege here made him shudder. With a more powerful enemy on the mountainside, the inhabitants of the city would not stand a chance.
“Ready?” Chavo asked, leading Meklos to yet another set of stairs.
Meklos nodded. Places usually didn’t make him uncomfortable, but this one did.
And he wasn’t entirely sure why.
4
Navi Salvino clasped her hands behind her back and studied the holographic map floating above the table. She had walked around it now a dozen times, zooming in, zooming out, and still she couldn’t decide what to do.
The Naramzin Mountain Range looked formidable all by itself, but the strictures on landing anywhere near the Spires of Denon made this job almost impossible.
She wouldn’t be able to get her people into the city of Denon without being seen. She certainly couldn’t use weapons, and the newest strictures, made by the Monuments Protection Arm of the Unified Governments of Amnthra, restricted most forms of scanning equipment as well.
The Unified Governments had been suing Scholars Exploration for ownership of the mountaintop itself. Scholars Exploration had used a loophole in some of the local laws to claim ownership of the mountaintop.
Apparently the Unified Governments had never designed the Spires a protected area, which was a major mistake.
The Scholars took advantage of major mistakes. They’d become the bully in the sector, at least when it came to research sites.
In the beginning, the Scholars had simply been a way for sector universities to protect their research. A dozen universities had founded Scholars Exploration to give them some clout with the various sector governments. A variety of donors, many wealthy alumni, had provided startup funding for the company decades ago. That start-up money had become a large fortune, thanks to the funds generated by patents, copyrights, sales of land and items made and/or found by the various scholars.
Most people saw the Scholars as a boon to knowledge throughout the sector. Navi saw them as a pain in the ass.
She walked around the table yet again. The mountaintop rose as if it had been carved there.
The Spires rose above the white mountaintop, hopelessly delicate. On one of her passes, she had counted sixteen spires, but it was hard to gauge, since they twisted and twined into each other. One branch would rise into a point, while another part of it forked away, wrapping itself around another spire.
The highest spire stood alone for several meters, white and shining in the simulation, as if lit from within.
If this holographic map was even half as impressive as the Spires themselves, then they were something to behold.
She pressed a button on her wristband, summoning this job’s expert. She hated the experts. They were self-important little people who often felt slighted by being left out of some Scholars Exploration expedition.
The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack Page 4