The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  She wasn’t happy that he had come with the divers. But he wanted to watch them suit up. He also didn’t like the half-empty packs, the way that they glanced at each other, as if confirming some pre-arranged signal.

  He hadn’t had his team bring diving equipment on this mission, so he couldn’t send someone with the divers. He wouldn’t be able to monitor them, since the scanning requirements near the Spires were so restrictive.

  He was glad he had sent the weekly update from the Command Center. When the Scholars saw that in conjunction with the news that Dr. Reese had let the team go, they would understand why.

  And maybe they would send someone to supervise Dr. Reese.

  It took three crumbling flights of stairs—maybe as old as the Spires—to get to the cavern with the water. The water was a chalky mess of dust and some kind of oil.

  He wouldn’t want to go into it, although he gathered, from Dr. Reese’s conversation with the divers, that she had waded into it more than once.

  He couldn’t imagine why. She wouldn’t know where to put her feet or what she was stepping on. She also couldn’t know if there was a current.

  Because if this was part of a river, there could be a very strong current, one that might take divers and force them away from the caverns altogether.

  He mentioned this to the woman, Salvino. She had nodded, looking a little distracted. The man, Bruget, was the one who answered.

  “The suits are state of the art. They can keep us alive in adverse conditions for days. By then, we should figure out where we are and how to get out.”

  “Unless there is only one way out,” Meklos said.

  “Even then,” Bruget said. “A lead, a line….”

  “Or a small explosive,” Salvino said.

  “…would get us out.”

  An explosive. As if Dr. Reese would allow one to go off below the city.

  Still, Meklos had made his protest—both to them and to Dr. Reese. He had done what he could.

  They were professionals. Theoretically, they knew what they were getting into.

  The water started as a small trickle at the edge of this cavern. If Dr. Reese was right, the water level had been rising for centuries.

  But, she added, no one knew that for certain. For all they know, the caverns got flooded five hundred years ago and the water was evaporating.

  The divers were to find the source, if they could. If they couldn’t, they were to go all the way to the bottom of the caverns.

  Salvino warned that the dives might take days. She promised that they wouldn’t stay under than five hours each, and she recommended someone stay in the cavern at all times.

  Dr. Reese’s assistant, Yusef Kimber, would wait down here during this first dive. Apparently Dr. Reese didn’t want the non-permanent members of her team to even know the caverns were here—someone like Chavo or the other students.

  That alone made Meklos suspicious.

  Normally, watching over a dive was the kind of crappy mindless job given to someone with no status whatsoever.

  The divers set down their packs on a flat area not too far from the water’s edge. They opened the packs in unison, and removed their suits.

  Meklos had watched divers before. Generally they stripped before suiting up, but these two did not. They slid their suits over their clothing, then with a nod to each other, over their faces.

  Hands went up, adjusting, twisting, making certain. At one point, both divers stopped and stared at each other.

  They didn’t have helmets. The suit itself covered their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.

  As they stared at each other, he realized they were checking their communications equipment.

  He wondered if Dr. Reese realized that, and if she did, if she objected to the use of the equipment. He didn’t know how far its reach was, but it had to cover a good distance, in case the divers got separated.

  He glanced at Dr. Reese. She watched intently, her fingers threaded together. As the divers continued to check their equipment, she twisted her fingers, keeping them locked, but trying to pull them apart at the same time.

  She was nervous, almost frightened.

  Finally, the divers finished. They turned to Meklos and Dr. Reese. The divers were distinguishable now only by height and body shape. The suits themselves matched. The suits looked like a thin silver coating that someone had applied over every centimeter of the divers. The suits moved easily with the divers.

  After a moment, the divers gave Dr. Reese a tiny salute. Then Salvino walked into the water, followed closely by Bruget. It took them only a few steps to disappear.

  “Do you have some kind of communicator to stay in touch with them?” Meklos asked.

  Dr. Reese shook her head. “We can’t use equipment that powerful here,” she said. “Although we did compromise and let them bring their emergency beacons. If they get in trouble, we’ll know, and we’ll know where to find them.”

  “Then what?” Meklos asked. “We don’t have another diver.”

  “We’ll figure it out if it happens,” she said. “I doubt that it will.”

  He shivered, a movement that had nothing to do with the cold. He loathed her callousness, and her blithe assumption that everything would be fine.

  No one knew what was down there. No one knew what they would encounter.

  And whenever anyone was in a situation where no one knew what could go wrong, something inevitably did.

  “I hope you’re insured if something goes wrong here,” he said.

  She glanced at him.

  “I have no idea,” she said. Then she smiled. “But I do know that they are.”

  18

  The water was cold. Navi couldn’t feel it through her suit, but she knew it anyway, and that made her shiver. The whole dive was making her nervous, in a way that she didn’t entirely understand.

  The final equipment check worked. The comm was on. She walked down into the submerged cavern, the water rising until it covered her head.

  The water was chalky, murky, dark, like a lake after someone had disturbed the sediment below. She turned on the suit’s dim lights—which Roye called fog lights—and could see a bit better.

  Then she turned on all of her cameras. She wanted this dive recorded, so she wouldn’t have to repeat it.

  If they found something, she wanted to be able to identify it clearly.

  You back there? she asked Roye through the comm.

  Right behind you, he said.

  His voice sounded small and mechanical through the suit. She fought the urge to turn toward him.

  Deploy map, she said.

  She hadn’t dared give that order above in case they were monitoring the communication. But she doubted they would monitor through the water.

  Gabrielle Reese didn’t even seem to care about communications. She seemed detached, almost withdrawn. When Roye had brought up the idea of a malfunction, she had shrugged.

  She really didn’t seem to care if they survived or not.

  That was one way to run a dig. It didn’t matter how many people died, just so long as the artifacts got out.

  But Navi had checked before she even arrived on Amnthra. Gabrielle Reese’s digs suffered no more deaths than other digs. No more, but no less either. She always seemed to stay within the average, even though her earlier digs were on worlds much more hostile than this one.

  The only anomaly in any of the information was that Gabrielle Reese’s digs often had deaths later rather than earlier.

  Navi could find no reason for that little statistical blip. Although now, as she walked along the bottom of this cavern in the murky darkness, she wondered if it wasn’t because Dr. Reese ceased using precautions later in her projects—precautions that were in place early on.

  Navi turned on her map. It rose in front of her left eye. The map itself was a series of thin outlines, clear so that she could see through them. Except for the red dot which marked where she was standing, she saw no color at all.r />
  There’s a lot of cave to go, she said.

  But not a lot of cavern, Roye said. We explore this area here, and that’s about it. If we’re going to find anything, it’ll be here.

  She turned on the lights above her helmet and in her fingertips. She directed the beams toward the walls.

  More little niches, but they appeared empty.

  She would have to get closer to make sure.

  Sediment did flow around her, like snow in a harsh breeze. The water was hard to walk through, but she didn’t want to swim. She wasn’t sure it would be easier—the water seemed more viscous here than it had on the surface.

  What the hell is this stuff? she asked.

  Taking a sample now, he said. It’s got some chemical composition that wasn’t present above, but if we want a better reading we’re going to need the ship’s equipment.

  Just great, she said, but she kept walking.

  Finally, she reached the wall. Niches stacked on top of each other like cubbyholes. Gingerly she eased her left hand inside, and found nothing. The edges of the niche were waterworn, and the walls themselves seemed furry.

  Mold maybe, or some kind of algae. She took a sample of that and placed it in her own kit.

  Whatever that stuff was, it meant that this part of the cavern had been underwater for a very long time.

  This seems a little weird to be a museum, Roye said.

  Let’s not jump to conclusions, she said. We’re just getting started.

  Then she shivered again. They were just getting started. They had planned their route the night before: This series of large caverns, then two passageways down, another bigger cave. If they didn’t find anything there, they’d use scanning equipment to see if they could find the water’s source.

  And if they didn’t find that, then they would work their way back.

  She was ready to go back now. She was so tense that she had been grinding her teeth—at least, she thought she had. They ached, even though her jaw didn’t.

  You finding anything? she asked Roye.

  A whole lotta nothing, he said.

  Me too. But she dutifully felt and walked and recorded, going over the giant cavern bit by furry bit.

  19

  The divers disappeared under the water. Gabrielle watched for several minutes, until the bubbles faded and she couldn’t see shadows moving under the surface.

  The cold had numbed her hands—she hadn’t worn gloves or added protection because she knew she wouldn’t be down here long.

  Besides, she liked carrying the chill to the surface and let the sun burn it off her.

  She was about to leave when something rustled behind her. She turned.

  Meklos was kneeling in front of the divers’ packs. He had opened one and was taking the pieces out.

  “I thought you already inspected those,” she said.

  “I did,” he said. “I wanted to see if they added anything.”

  “You still don’t trust them,” she said.

  “You pay me not to trust anyone.”

  She shook her head. She was glad he would be gone soon. Who knew that security guards could be so thorough?

  She watched him take items out—things she couldn’t quite identify. And then he stopped as he removed an extra suit.

  “You got someone who can use this?” he asked.

  She shook her head. She had no idea. He had asked something similar before, and she hadn’t known the answer then either.

  She wasn’t sure why he cared.

  “So they have a back-up,” she said. “So what?”

  “Back-up,” he muttered. “Hmmm.”

  He set the suit aside and continued his search.

  “If you don’t need me any longer,” she said, “I’m heading to the surface where it’s warm.”

  Without waiting for his answer, she walked around him to the stairs. She glanced at Yusef. He was bundled in three extra layers of clothing beneath his heavy coat.

  “You’ll be all right?” she asked.

  He held up a reading pad and pointed to his lunch. “I’m here for the long haul.”

  She smiled at him. Then she took one last look at the water. It seemed completely undisturbed now, as if there weren’t two humans beneath it.

  A chill ran down her spine. She certainly wouldn’t go down there.

  But, then, she wasn’t being paid to.

  20

  Meklos had cleared out the packs, finding nothing he hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for—a small piece of equipment, a tiny receiver, something. But he didn’t find anything except the third suit.

  Was it simply a required precaution or was there a third diver hiding somewhere?

  He didn’t know enough about professional cave diving to know what the required precautions were. Regular water diving didn’t last as long as a cave dive; the suits weren’t as sophisticated and weren’t meant to last for days should something go wrong.

  He picked up the suit and poked it with his finger. It stretched, then embraced his finger, becoming a part of it.

  He had a hunch puncturing this thing would take a great deal of work. It might be impossible.

  So it wasn’t as fragile as it initially seemed.

  If the suit had belonged to Dr. Reese, he would have punctured it and dealt with the consequences. But he didn’t want to risk insulting the experts.

  Besides, they might need that third suit for a reason he hadn’t yet thought of. He didn’t dare do anything to it, at least until the dive was over.

  But he did turn it inside out. Controls were scattered throughout—some on the fingertips, some on the back of the hand. Others ran along the chin.

  The eye area was clear, but probably had some kind of communications screen. He pressed one of the control chips along the chin and the eye area lit up. He pressed another and got a temperature readout that ran along the side of the right eye.

  Then he pressed a third and the Spires appeared before the left eye, looking just like they did on the floor of the temple.

  Only on this image of the Spires was clear, except for the outlines of the branches and a red dot at the edge of one of the wide areas.

  His heart started to pound. He picked up the suit and carried it to the steps.

  The red dot moved with him.

  He cursed.

  “Everything okay?” Yusef asked.

  Meklos almost cursed again. He had forgotten Yusef was here.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I accidentally turned something on. I need to figure out how to shut it off.”

  “Let me.” Yusef had to struggle to stand with all of his layers of clothing.

  Meklos pressed the controls again. The Spires disappeared.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I got it.”

  “Never seen a suit like that before, huh?” Yusef asked.

  “Not like this,” Meklos said. “Have you?”

  “I try not to do anything that requires I carry my environment with me,” Yusef said. “This is as close to an environmental suit as I get.”

  He indicated his coat and boots.

  Meklos smiled because he was supposed to. Then he shut off the other parts of the suit, turned it rightside to, and put it back inside the pack.

  Then he turned to Yusef. “You sure you don’t want one of my team down here too?”

  Yusef shrugged. “I’m okay by myself.”

  “You’ve established emergency procedures?”

  “I have some field medicine training, if needed. Besides, I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine. If the caverns below are anything like the caverns up here, there aren’t even sharp edges for them to get caught on.”

  He was as cavalier as his employer. Maybe that was why Yusef and Dr. Reese got along so well.

  “I’ll be back down before they’re due to come up,” Meklos said.

  “Okay.” Yusef sounded like he didn’t care. He pressed himself against the wall, getting white residue on the back of
his coat. He sank to the floor facing the water, but pulled out his work pad.

  Meklos shook his head. Maybe he’d send someone down.

  After he had some time to think.

  Because he felt mildly stupid already. How could he have missed it? The Spires weren’t some artistic design. They were a map.

  A three-dimensional map of the cave system below the city.

  But why would there be a map of the caves so visible from the mountaintop?

  “You guys ever figure out what the Spires were for?” Meklos asked.

  Yusef gave him an annoyed look. Clearly the man wanted to be left alone. “They were never my specialty. I came here for the city.”

  “But has anyone figured out what they’re for? I mean, they’re pretty dramatic.”

  “The whole place is dramatic,” Yusef said.

  Meklos stared at him.

  Yusef figured out that he wasn’t going to leave until the question got answered.

  “And no, no one knows for certain what they are. All that inlay, all that writing, the way they vibrate if you hit them too hard says artwork to me. But I’ll leave it to people who are interested. I’d much rather look at a building than some sculpture that people attached to a mountaintop.”

  He sounded convinced. He sounded irritated.

  Meklos nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “I was just wondering.”

  “Yep,” Yusef said. “Everyone wonders about this place. Maybe someday we’ll have answers.”

  “Maybe,” Meklos said as he mounted the stairs for the surface.

  And maybe, he thought, some people already had this place all figured out.

  21

  Nothing in the widest part of the caverns. Navi had steeled herself to come across some statue, a face looming in the murk, maybe, or an arm reaching out to her.

  But nothing like that happened.

  She walked through meters and meters of thick water, the white sediment thick and flowing around her as if she were in the middle of a blizzard.

  Creepiest dive I’ve done in a long time, Roye said.

  Me, too.

  She had been hoping for artifacts. Maybe they got moved as the caverns flooded. Maybe she would step into one of the smaller areas and find everything crammed against the walls, forced by the force of the water.