The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  He needed to get those divers out before the archeologists screwed things up again.

  35

  Finally, Navi’s head rose above the water. She let out a relieved breath and almost removed her suit, then remembered how cold this cavern was.

  It was completely empty. She thought Gabrielle Reese had left someone to watch for them, but no one was in the cavern. And their packs were gone.

  She swam until she had to walk, and then she hurried out of the water, her breath coming in small gasps. As she got closer to the water’s edge, she scanned the cavern.

  It looked like the one she had left, but she wasn’t sure. Caverns could look alike down here, with their niches and their archways—

  And the stairs.

  Not only were there stairs, but the stairs had footprints, going up, coming down and going up.

  She made her gaze follow the footprints until she saw a huge disturbance in the cavern floor. It was right next to the wall, near where the water ended.

  Someone had been sitting there, and someone else had come down. One set of footprints came down, and two went up, although one seemed like that person dragged their feet.

  The fact she could see prints registered for the first time. The water wasn’t the only thing filled with more sediment. The walls had flaked, and the flaking had been severe.

  The flakes had fallen throughout the cavern like snow.

  Which meant that this had happened before. Because of the sediment in the water. That had come from somewhere before the barrier came down.

  She stepped out of the water, and searched for her pack. It had to be here. It was probably just covered in sediment.

  The sediment clung to her feet and legs, coating her in white. As she disturbed it, more and more covered her.

  Then she heard something from above.

  She looked up. A man came down the stairs, sideways, holding the wall.

  The man’s head suddenly came into view. It was Meklos Verr, the head of security.

  The competent one.

  She let out the breath she was holding, relieved.

  “Oh, thank god,” she said, and realized her voice was muffled by the suit. She pulled it off her face.

  The air wasn’t just cold.

  It was frigid.

  “Where’s your partner?” Meklos said. “Is he all right?”

  “I think so,” she said. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  “What does that mean?” He finally reached the bottom part of the cavern. “Is he behind you?”

  “No,” she said, then glanced at the water.

  “Then where is he?”

  If she told Meklos, she would have to tell him about the map. She would have to explain her scans. She would probably have to admit who she was.

  She glanced at the stairs.

  “Are you alone?” she asked.

  “At the moment. I sent for reinforcements. Some members of my team have water diving experience. I was going to use your extra suit.”

  Something passed across his face then. His expression sharpened for just a moment.

  “The suit,” he said, “adjusts to the wearer, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “And you can stay underwater for a very long time,” he said.

  “It’s designed for that,” she said.

  “So you and one of my team can get him.”

  She shook her head. “We probably won’t have to.”

  She hoped they wouldn’t have to. She never wanted to go into that water again.

  “You triggered something down there,” he said.

  “A barrier. Roye was on one side, and I was on the other.”

  “So he went out the passageway to the ship you have waiting.”

  She blinked at him, not sure if she had heard him correctly.

  “I found your map,” he said. “How did you get that?”

  She had heard him. This day was full of surprises.

  “He’ll contact me when he gets out,” she said, choosing not to answer Meklos’s question. “I’m not sure how long to wait.”

  “What were you planning to do? Rob the lower caverns? Take all the loot and fly it out of here without any of us being wiser?” He took a step toward her. “What even made you think there’s something down in those caverns?”

  “There’s nothing in those caverns,” she said.

  “You know that now,” he said. “But you thought something was down there before.”

  “I did,” she said. “I was told this might be a museum. For the Denonites. They would have used it for all the spoils of the various wars they fought.”

  “And you came to rob it,” Meklos said.

  “I came to save it,” she said.

  He glared at her. “Really?”

  “Really,” she said.

  “How did you plan to do that?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath. She was going to have to trust him. “By getting enough evidence to arrest Dr. Gabrielle Reese.”

  36

  A light was moving along the interior lines of the Spires. Gabrielle had gone inside the temple to watch. Looking up at the Spires hurt her eyes, but in here, in the dimness, she could see the light move.

  It moved as if someone were shining a light source on a particular area. Then, once that area received a thorough examination, the source moved to the next area.

  If she hadn’t learned long ago that there were no light sources underneath the drawing of the Spires (at least none that she recognized), she would have thought someone was playing with lights underneath the floor.

  The movement unnerved her. The way everything had changed in just the past hour had unnerved her.

  Her staff crowded parts of the temple. They were using scanners and talking loudly. Before people had spoken in hushed tones here. Now the voices were raised, excited, the way people talked when they were panicked and thrilled at the same time.

  Her team thought this new development interesting.

  It worried her.

  Not just because it could be dangerous. Hell, it was dangerous. She had seen Yusef as the staff carried him to their doctor. He was so pale she thought he had died. Blood blackened both of his ears, and his lips were blue.

  Something had happened in that cavern. Chavo ventured a guess that the sound was magnified down there. But she wasn’t so sure.

  She wasn’t sure about anything.

  She wasn’t even sure why that light was moving.

  The only thing she could tell was that it was heading away from the caverns.

  And she couldn’t figure out why that would happen either.

  She rubbed her hands over her upper arms, feeling the gooseflesh along her skin.

  In all her years digging and searching, finding ancient burial sites, ancient treasure, she had never experienced anything like this.

  And she never wanted to experience anything like it again.

  37

  “Arrest Doctor Reese?” Meklos couldn’t keep the shock from his voice. He’d researched Dr. Reese before taking this job. Even though she wasn’t yet forty, she had discovered several important sites, including this one. She’d made large contributions to the fields of archeology, art history, and general history in this sector.

  Granted, she was a loner and not always liked by her crews, but that hadn’t bothered him. Most people in positions of power weren’t liked.

  Although he hadn’t liked her either, partly because of her attitude and partly because she had hid information from him.

  Like these caves.

  “Yes, we were looking for reasons to arrest her.” Salvino had found the packs. She picked one up, making the sediment float around her like a dust storm. Some of the whiteness adhered to her right thigh, her belly, and her lower arm.

  Then she let the pack fall. She opened her suit, and slowly pulled it off, sliding it off her right arm and hand first, and then going to her left.

  Meklos was torn between two questions.
He wanted more information on Dr. Reese and this startling announcement.

  But, over the years, he had learned that startling announcements were often diversionary tactics, to make a questioner forget his line of questioning.

  He had asked Salvino if she was going to rob the artifacts from this area, just before she had said she was going to prevent a robbery. She hadn’t answered his first question.

  So he decided against pursuing that tack and went for the other.

  “I checked you out,” he said, not adding that he had done it as best he could in a limited amount of time. “You’re a cave diver, not a police officer.”

  “Technically, I’m neither.” Salvino stepped out of the suit. It crumpled against the ground. The water dripping off it made a little trail back to the pool.

  Then she opened her pack. She slid her hand inside, grasped a seam, and peeled it back.

  Meklos cursed. How had he missed that? Not once, but twice.

  She glanced at him. “You couldn’t have found it without very specialized equipment,” she said as if she were reading his thoughts. “It’s keyed to my DNA, and my DNA only. That’s why I wasn’t worried about leaving the pack behind. You’d never find this pouch and if you miraculously did, you’d never open it.”

  He pressed his lips together. He didn’t believe in never. He would have gotten it open, eventually.

  She slipped her hand into the pouch and pulled something out. It was some kind data on drive as thin as a fingernail.

  She handed it to him, but he didn’t have a scanner on him.

  “What this will tell you,” she said, “is that I’m Navi Salvino of the Interagency Arts and Monuments Protection League. We’re a squad of investigators authorized by various governments, including the Unified Governments of Amnthra, to protect historic sites and properties throughout the sector. If we do find a problem, we turn that problem over to the enforcement arm best equipped to handle that problem.”

  He slipped the small dataport into a pocket of his shirt, and sealed that pocket. He’d heard of the Interagency Arts and Monuments Protection League mostly by its acronym IAMPL. In the last decade, they’d stopped some spectacular thefts throughout the sector.

  But that didn’t mean she was a legitimate part of the organization. Only that she had heard of it, along with everyone else in the sector.

  “Dr. Reese has a fantastic reputation,” Meklos said.

  “I’m sure you noted that when you decided to take this job,” Salvino said. “You probably also noted that she had a significant amount of money in various accounts.”

  He had. He hadn’t thought much of it. She was an in-demand expert in her field, a woman who command high prices for almost anything she did.

  “That wasn’t my concern.”

  “It was ours.” Salvino pulled the thin heating blanket from her pack. She flapped the blanket open, then wrapped it around herself. “No matter how well known they are, people in Dr. Reese’s position don’t make a great deal of money. Everything they do is paid for. The Scholars funded this expedition, and will continue to fund it for all the years of its lifetime. They funded her previous expeditions as well.”

  “So?” Meklos was getting cold. He’d run around a great deal since the sirens went off, sweating through his clothes. Now the clammy material was starting to freeze. “That proves nothing.”

  “In and of itself, you’re right.” Salvino pushed her hair out of her face. Her hand was trembling. “But we also found a lot of small items with dubious provenance that we could later trace back to her earlier digs. At some point, she takes items from her sites and sends them through a series of dealers. She sells these small items to private buyers for a great deal of money.”

  “I don’t know how she could,” Meklos said. “This dig is well known.”

  But as he spoke, he understood. The dig was well known, but the location of the so-called museum wasn’t. If the caverns were as billed, then Dr. Reese could have taken items from here before they were ever recorded. They would have been deemed lost, if they were even known.

  She hadn’t told him about the caverns. She didn’t want her assistants down here. From Chavo’s reaction, he hadn’t known about the cavern either.

  She had been keeping secrets.

  Too many of them.

  “You’re beginning to understand,” Salvino said.

  “Or you’re lying to me to cover up your own plan.”

  She sighed. “My plan was simple. I wanted to get into this dig to see if there were valuables to loot. The cave diving was a gift. Then we were able to map the caverns, and—”

  “How did you map the caverns?” he asked. “Dr. Reese didn’t.”

  “Dr. Reese was afraid of her site,” Salvino said. “She didn’t want to use equipment because of the Spires.”

  “You believe that?” he asked. It could have been a good excuse to keep everyone else from finding the caverns below.

  “Yes, I believe that,” Salvino said. She picked up her suit, folded it, and shoved it into her pack. “All the scientists worried that the Spires were too fragile to handle much of anything.”

  He had seen that in some of his research.

  “We decided to try scanning from the ground, just outside the secure zone. But we were looking for the caverns.” Salvino picked up the other pack. The blanket started to slide off her shoulders. “No one else ever did.”

  Meklos put the blanket around her, then took both packs. “How did you know about the caverns?” he asked.

  “We didn’t. But when I realized we were going to see the Spires, I hired an expert, a man by the name of Zeigler—”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Meklos said.

  She gave Meklos a measuring look. “Then you know why I trusted his instinct. It turned out to be right.”

  Meklos nodded. He would check Salvino out, but her explanations made a lot of sense.

  “Lying about your cave diving experience could have killed you,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Nothing in my information packet was a lie. I’ve dived a lot, mostly on jobs like this. You’d be surprised how many ancient cities are flooded.”

  “Nothing was a lie,” he repeated. “But you left out a lot.”

  “I erased everything that was important, figuring no one would bother to check. I was right.”

  His cheeks warmed. “I checked,” he said. “But the equipment here—”

  “Worked to my advantage,” she said. Her teeth were chattering.

  “What’s your plan now?” he asked. “Go to the surface and arrest Dr. Reese?”

  “No,” Salvino said. “There’s no reason. The caverns are empty.”

  “So you say,” Meklos said. “There’s no way to check. For all I know, your companion is taking valuables out now.”

  “I’ll let you check our ship,” she said. “You can examine everything we have.”

  He gave her a measuring look. She seemed truthful, but he had no real way to know.

  Although deep down, he trusted her.

  And he had never trusted Dr. Reese.

  38

  As they climbed the stairs, Meklos explained what happened above ground to Navi. He explained his defense system theory.

  It made sense.

  It made her disappointment fade.

  She had wanted to see the museum. But that didn’t exist—or no longer existed, at least not here. The defense system was almost as good, maybe better, since it probably had applications in the modern era.

  And it would prevent Gabrielle Reese from robbing this place blind—if, indeed, there was anything to steal. Because she wouldn’t be in charge any longer.

  The Scholars got most of their funding from government grants from all over the sector. Various governments would want to know how this defense system worked. They’d bid for the rights to study it.

  This entire place would become famous. Dr. Reese wouldn’t have untrammeled access any longer.

  They had
nearly reached the top of the stairs when Navi put her hand on Meklos’s arm.

  “Check me out,” she said. “As soon as we get to the surface. If what you say is true, then you can use proper communications equipment right from the city and it won’t cause any harm. With a more powerful system, you’ll see my bio, even without the disk I gave you. You’ll find it all.”

  He stopped beside her, moving the packs to one hand. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because we’re going to hire you. You’ll guard this place for us until we can bring in reinforcements and take control from Dr. Reese.”

  “She found this place. By your own admission, she hasn’t done anything,” he said. “You were right. There is no reason to take her off the dig.”

  Navi smiled. “I’m glad you understand. She truly is a gifted expert in her field. She should be allowed to stay. But you need to make sure everything else stays as well.”

  He grunted, which she took as an assent. Although she wasn’t sure.

  She climbed the remaining steps into the building. People combed the walls, scanning everything.

  The site looked completely different than it had in the morning.

  “Are there really caves down there?” one of the graduate students asked her.

  The kid was so excited he apparently didn’t noticed the white all over her clothing or the blanket around her shoulders. Or the way her teeth were chattering.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” Navi said. She let Meklos lead her into the sunshine.

  The warm sunshine that seemed to have a life of its own. It undulated like water toward the building that Gabrielle Reese had called the temple.

  Clearly that wasn’t a temple at all, but some kind of central control station.

  “You want to see it?” Meklos asked her.

  Navi nodded. She wanted to see it, then she wanted to go back to the building she’d been staying in. She wanted to sit alone in the darkness and shake.

  She wanted a few minutes to let the fear ease away before she had to be completely professional again.

  39

  The light was almost to the end of the Spires now. Gabrielle studied the light moving through the two-dimensional drawing as if it were alive and about to attack.

  A few of her team had gathered around as well, asking questions that she mostly ignored.