Metal Sky

by Jay Caselberg

  “It is something, isn’t it?” said Hervé from the front. He was concentrating on negotiating the winding path down to the valley floor, but even he risked a glance or two as they descended. “It always fills me with a kind of awe. Perhaps you might say respect.”

  Jack was reaching for some sort of spark deep within himself, but there was nothing there apart from natural amazement at the site itself. Billie was leaning almost across him, trying to get a better view. Okay, she was excited, he was impressed, but there had to be more than that. The Talbot figure in his dreams had told him he had to be here. There was nothing yet to tell him the vision had been more than just a conjuration from his true subconscious, rather than that part of him that put him in places he was meant to be. He would have expected something to be working by now, this close to their destination. If it turned out that he’d simply blown all of Bridgett Farrell’s funds on some subconscious whim, he was not going to feel good about this at all.

  It didn’t take long to descend to the valley floor proper, and as they came closer and closer, the sheer size of the structures started to sink in. Whoever or whatever had built these things didn’t believe in doing things by halves. Jack leaned back, peering up through the transport’s ceiling at the shattered tops—because that’s what they were, shattered, crumbling uneven ends to square fingers pointing to the sky.

  “Are all the tops like that?” asked Jack.

  Hervé looked where Jack was looking and nodded. “Yes, all of them are the same. They are all buildings. There are floors within them and entrance places as we shall see, but not a single one has a roof or a ceiling. We suspect that the damage is simple exposure to the elements over time. No one has yet been able to establish an accurate dating for the city, but we know that it is very old. After perhaps thousands of years, you expect some deterioration from exposure. We are very lucky, perhaps, that the buildings themselves are still standing.”

  They pulled into a parking area. There were a couple of other resort transports similar to their own, and a few other vehicles which Jack presumed were from members of the archeological team. Hervé clambered down from the front and opened the rear doors to let them get out. He stood for a couple of seconds waiting as both Jack and Billie stared at the first clusters of buildings, craning back to see their tops. When they’d had enough time to appreciate the true majesty of what they were seeing, Hervé began his spiel.

  “These are the outer buildings. You can see they are positioned in clusters of four. The entire city is laid out in a grid pattern, itself a square. The area between each of the sets of four buildings is exactly the same, leading us to believe not only in the ordered nature of the builders, but that the number four has some special significance to them. Clusters of four. Four sides to the square. Four pathways leading to each intersection. The pattern continues throughout the entire city.”

  Yes, all of that made sense. Jack pulled out his handipad, thumbed it on and called up the map. “Have you any idea what the builders looked like?” he asked.

  “No,” said Hervé. “Unfortunately there are no pictorial representations within the site, or none that have been found. Of course time and the elements could have obliterated any that were there. That’s one of the things the on-site team is working on, trying to discover something that might give some clue as to the nature of these beings. If we were to find something like furniture, or maybe something else, it would give us some clues, but so far, there has been nothing.”

  Still Jack was feeling an absolute internal void. The site was interesting and impressive enough, but there was nothing sparking inside him. He grimaced and glanced up at the buildings’ tops again. Where was it? Where was the thing he had come to find?

  Eleven

  All the literature, what Hervé had told them during their meander through the vast columns, everything had been right; the site was nothing less than impressive. Dark mottled stonework thrust up above them as they negotiated the spaces between the buildings. Each tower had its own broad entranceway, and they peeked inside a couple, but whatever had been in there, if there had ever been anything, was long gone. The doorways had four sides as well. The tops of each entranceway were pointed, something like a squared-off arch, the two top edges shorter and narrower than the sides. Jack glanced from side to side as they progressed, looking up each of the side streets—well, he presumed they were streets—seeking anything that could act as a prompt. All he saw was ordered uniformity. There wasn’t even any rubble to fix on.

  They’d been wandering for about an hour, Hervé giving them a running commentary, when Billie spoke up.

  “Where are they working?” she asked.

  Hervé stopped, looked at her speculatively, leaned one hand against a nearby structure, wiped his forehead with the back of one hand, and then scratched his ample belly. “Well, let me see. We are in sector six now. That would make it . . . over there.” He gestured back behind them.

  “Have you been to that section?” she asked. “Have you worked there?”

  “Well, yes, as it happens, I have had the good fortune to spend some time on the site. It’s more to the center of the city and seems to have been less affected by time and the elements. There are one or two interesting features there.”

  “Wow, that must have been exciting,” said Billie, her eyes wide, rubbing at one arm.

  “Yes, indeed it was,” he said. “I hope to have such an opportunity again soon if I am fortunate.”

  Billie glanced up at Jack, for once seeking some sort of approval before heading farther down the path she was pursuing. He gave her a quick nod. It couldn’t hurt. So far he was no closer to a spark than when they had arrived.

  “Can we go and see? Please?”

  Hervé chuckled. “All right. Let us see what we can do. I’m not really supposed to take you down that way, but I cannot see it doing any harm. You won’t be able to see too much, but you might see a little.”

  “Really? We can?”

  “Sure.” Hervé pushed himself off the wall and beckoned them down one of the straight avenues running between the building clusters. By now the paths were deep in shadow, but a warm breeze stirred, bringing the smell of old earth and stone, the taste of dust.

  “Do you think the buildings were always this color?” asked Jack, staring up at a wall, mottled in brown and deeper gray-brown patches.

  “No. It is a good question,” Hervé answered without turning around, continuing his waddle down an adjoining street. “Some of us believe that the buildings were once covered in some material. We think it’s likely that they were smooth. There have been discoveries of flat, metallic sheets, with designs on one surface, but there have not been enough of them to confirm the theories. If it had been so, we suspect the buildings would all have been covered like this, giving them a vague shine, like dull mirrors.”

  Jack glanced up again, trying to picture it. A slight shine. How would that have looked from a distance?

  Before long, their path was stopped by a broad barrier. Flat panels blocked access to one of the streets, temporary wide, flat boards, locked together in an interlocked wall. A couple of names and dates were hastily scrawled across a couple of these. Even out here there was graffiti—the need for someone to stamp a record of their presence. On one side the fence continued, turning sharply and heading off toward the city’s other end. On the other, the panels made way for metal fencing. Signs affixed to the fence’s outer side warned of restricted access.

  Hervé waved Billie forward, and they headed off toward the right.

  “I don’t know how much you will be able to see from out here,” said their guide, “but if you look through this fence, you might be able to catch sight of something.”

  Jack followed a little behind. When he caught up to them, Billie had her hands linked into the fence, standing on tiptoes and peering across the space within.

  Large lights, currently switched off, stood around the flat expanse between buildings. A few tools lay
discarded on the ground. It seemed if there were any archeologists here today, they were off somewhere on a break. Blocks were tumbled here and there, some with labels affixed to the piles with numbers scrawled on them. Over to one side sat a stack of crates. Jack was just about to turn away, see what else he could see, when something about the crates snagged his attention. He leaned in closer to see. He couldn’t be sure at this distance, but on the side of one of the crates was stamped a symbol—and the design looked like something he knew only too well.

  “Where are the people?” said Billie.

  “They are probably working on another section today,” said Hervé. He was looking through the fence, an expression almost like longing on his face.

  Jack took the opportunity to tap Billie on the shoulder and get her attention. He gestured toward the stacked crates with his chin. She looked over in that direction, narrowed her eyes, and shook her head. Jack traced a quick circle in the air. Billie took his meaning immediately and turned back, narrowing her eyes and leaning in a little closer. When she turned back to face him, her mouth was half open and she was nodding slowly. He had been right. The symbol stamped on the side of the boxes was a snake eating its own tail.

  “Dammit,” he breathed. He tried to ignore the slight chill the realization brought. It was the same symbol that had crawled through his dreams when he’d been dealing with Outreach back in the Locality, the same symbol that had worked as the key to that case.

  “Did you want to know something, Mr. Stinson?” asked Hervé.

  “Um, yes,” said Jack slowly. “I couldn’t help noticing that there’s a design on those boxes over there. Does it mean anything?”

  Hervé looked where he was pointing. “Oh, that. No, it is nothing to do with the site. Part of the work here is funded by a corporation. One of those big companies. The university only has so many resources. It relies on external funding for some of the work. Some of the equipment is provided by this corporation and they ship it in using those crates. It’s just the transport company symbol.”

  “You don’t know which corporation it is?” asked Jack.

  Hervé’s big round face looked troubled for a moment. “No,” he said. “I don’t pay much attention to such things. Why do you ask?”

  “Just interested,” said Jack. If he had anything to do with the site proper, then he’d have to know something like that. It wasn’t worth pushing it right now. Hervé really might not know, but Jack had some idea. Unless he was way off the mark, his old friends Outreach Industries had some sort of involvement. There was no way that could be a good thing.

  He glanced at Billie again. She returned the look flatly, showing no reaction apart from a slight narrowing of her eyes. He nodded and changed the focus.

  “And what’s over there?”

  Again Hervé looked where he was pointing. Large sheets covered an uneven shape.

  “Ahh, that. Yes. That area is very interesting. This particular cluster had a central platform that looked like it was some meeting area, or a commemorative device. We can only speculate as to its purpose. There were some interesting artifacts found there, still intact. Of course most of them have been removed now for further study, back to the university.”

  “Artifacts? Like what?”

  “I was lucky enough to see some of them. They were like stelae. You know, like stones or tablets with carvings or designs on them. They were held in position, set into platforms beneath.” He illustrated with his hands.

  “So they were stones?”

  “No, like stone tablets, but they were made of some sort of metal. The floor was very interesting too. There were designs, pointing to these things. Some of the team postulated that they were maps. They were like no map that anyone had seen though. The same researchers said the artifacts themselves were keys. Of course, there were others who disagreed. I myself would like to think that it was possible. Imagine it. Maps that point to the location of an alien race. Just think . . .” His face got a faraway expression and just then, Billie’s attention seemed to drift off into the same place.

  Jack couldn’t share the feeling. The pointer to Outreach’s involvement was still working somewhere deep in his guts.

  Hervé walked them through several more sections of the City of Trees, but apart from the fenced-off place where the work was taking place, there was a vast empty sameness to the buildings. All of them were hollow; either their contents had been looted or they had simply deteriorated over the passage of the years. He glanced inside as many of the entrances as he could in the hope of finding an object, something left behind that he could use as a dream prompt, searching for the stored impressions and energies that might prompt his visionary state. Vast echoing chamber after vast echoing chamber revealed nothing more than dust or rubble.

  Hervé glanced up at the sky and then at his timepiece. “We should be heading back,” he said.

  Jack glanced at his own, suddenly realizing that they’d been here for almost four full hours. He nodded. Billie looked slightly disappointed.

  Hervé led them through the ordered grid, back toward the parking area. Jack could feel the buildings stretching up around him, like some bizarre petrified forest. He was missing something, but it hadn’t come to him yet.

  On the way back to the Mandala Country Club, Billie rode up front, chatting merrily with Hervé about archeology, about work he’d done on the site, about what he thought had happened to the aliens. Jack only paid them half a mind. He was more interested in what he might be missing. He watched the site out of the back window as they approached the mountain path. The City of Trees. Hervé had said that the buildings were probably clad with something slightly reflective. It would have shone from a distance. Jack tried to correlate the dream image with what he was seeing behind him, but it just didn’t match. He narrowed his eyes, attempting to blur the image, trying to overlay what he remembered from his dream; then suddenly he realized what it was, why the match had been so hard to make. The City of Trees was only half a city. What lay stretched out behind them was the bottom half.

  “Yes,” he breathed to himself. They weren’t clusters of four buildings. Each grouping was the base of one entire building. They were partial pictures of the vast structures that had been in the city in his dreams, but they were missing the central spire. Cathedral trees. Cathedral buildings. It was as if some giant hand had taken a vast knife and simply sliced off the city’s entire top half. What sort of power could do that? He sat staring, trying to come to terms with the enormity of what he was thinking. It was contextual. There was no reason that the archeological team would think of them as anything other than individual buildings. No pictures. No graphical representations, or so Hervé had said. The only thing that had given Jack the clue was the dream.

  He watched the city all the way until it disappeared from sight behind the craggy rocks they climbed, and then he turned slowly back to face the road ahead. He wasn’t really seeing it though. The city, buzzing with shiny silver shapes, floated before him in his thoughts.

  Just before the Country Club came into view, Billie turned to Hervé and said something that brought Jack back with a snap.

  “Can I see that place close up—the one with the maps?”

  Jack frowned. Hervé slowed the vehicle and turned to look at her, chewing at his bottom lip.

  “We’re not supposed to allow access to the central area. That place is strictly out of bounds to visitors.”

  “Oh, but why?” said Billie. “I really, really want to see it. It’s just so interesting.”

  Jack could see what she was up to, and he bit his lip and let her continue. Maybe this was the opportunity he needed. Hervé was saying nothing, clearly considering. At last he answered.

  “Yes,” he said. “Why not? But you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone. We should go tomorrow, if we’re going to do it. You seem really interested in the site, and you know, I like that. I cannot see what harm it would do.”

  “Oh, thank you,
thank you,” said Billie, bouncing up and down on her seat.

  Jack leaned forward. “We really appreciate this, Hervé. When tomorrow?”

  Hervé glanced back at him. “I’m afraid I can only take your niece, Mr. Stinson. It would be too difficult otherwise. Sometime very early in the morning. Say seven o’clock. I will be there to pick her up.”

  Jack sat back, not entirely comfortable. He wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of Billie going off with this man alone. He cleared his throat.

  “Um, why can’t I go too?”

  “It would be far too difficult. If we’re found there, it would be easy enough to explain Susan’s presence. I might get into a little trouble, but nothing like if I took an adult in there. Other guides in the past have been found on the site in the secure area, having been paid to take visitors in, out of the normal tour routes. They were very quickly dismissed.”

  Jack considered. “Perhaps you would like to talk about a consideration . . .”

  Hervé lifted a hand. “No, that’s not necessary. I am perfectly happy to do this for Susan. I appreciate her hunger for knowledge. It is something I admire in someone so young. We have to look after our growing minds, encourage their enthusiasm. But you have to understand, I can only do it for her.”

  Jack leaned back again. “Okay.”

  Hervé left them at the parking area. He waited till they climbed out of the transport and then stood grinning.

  “It is certainly a lot to take in, is it not, Mr. Stinson. I hope you have found today’s expedition worthwhile. I know it is sometimes too vast for the imagination to come to terms with. You were very quiet on the way back. Not like Susan here.” He chuckled. “I am sure that some questions might come to you when you’ve had time to truly absorb everything you have seen. Quite often, people require more than one visit to really appreciate the site. If you wish another excursion, I am here for you and ready. Just book through your room system.”