by Allen Wold
Rikard switched off the automatic and angled the floater to the left, so as to be able to see between the towering white ruins. The one nearest them was in a bad state of disrepair, with gaps in the walls that revealed the interior floors, but the next one to the left was in much better condition. It was over a thousand stories tall, and even the tower on its apex was intact.
By the time they got to within five kilometers they could gee, between the arcologies, other ruins and structures, of different kinds, and at last got glimpses, in the spaces between those, of the white marble cones. They were not very tall, and apparently located in the center of this complex of ruins, as if the arcologies and other structures had been built up around them, for they could see, beyond the cones, more of the inner rings of ruins, and a broken fragment of an arcological pyramid sticking up beyond that.
Rikard headed for the gap between the two arcologies, which once had had connections between them partway up, arches and arcades and bridges. But while they were still a kilometer off they saw mat the whole complex was surrounded by a fence, and then they saw the occasional watch stations a kilometer or so apart along the fence, and farther around to the left what looked like a main gate or entrance post.
"Should we try to sneak by? Droagn asked.
"They've probably already seen us," Rikard said. "Let's pay them a visit, as if that were our intention."
He slowed the floater and turned it directly toward the entrance post, so that they drove up parallel to the fence at the last. That gave him a chance to look it over. It was made of high-tensile mesh, was fully five meters high, and was apparently carrying some kind of field or charge. As they neared the entrance post several people, dressed in protective clothing with the insignia and patterns of the Federal police, came out to meet them. Four of them carried light rifles slung over their shoulders, and the fifth had a holstered pistol on his hip. Rikard pulled up to within ten meters and stopped the floater. The guards stood waiting. Rikard and his companions got into their outdoor gear and went out to meet them.
The man with the pistol was wearing the insignia of a sergeant. He came up to them as they stood beside their floater. His mouth moved, but nothing came over Rikard's radio. The sergeant tapped the side of his helmet, and Rikard turned on his external phones.
"How may I help you?" the sergeant asked again.
Rikard turned on his speaker. "Why not radio?" he asked.
"It's a good idea to be aware of what's going on around you. Changes in wind, sometimes there are animals. Are you just looking around?"
"Not really." Rikard took a sealed folder from his belt and handed it to the sergeant. "It is our first time here, but we've come to examine those marble cones in the middle."
The sergeant opened the folder and looked at the credentials inside, in their own protective pockets. Rikard had taken pains to obtain legitimate licenses this time, and they gave him and his companions permission to look at any cones he wanted to, not just these in particular.
The sergeant handed back the folder and smiled. "Everything's in order," he said, "but I'm afraid I can't let you into the compound."
"Why not? If everything's in order..."
"It's not the cones, it's where they are. This whole area is off-limits. It has nothing to do with the ruins, but everything here is standing on a bed of low-grade balktapline ore. You can't go in without proper shielding, and you can't get that unless you specifically ask for it and prove need."
"You've got to be kidding," Rikard exclaimed. "What are you talking about? Droagn asked. The projected question surprised the sergeant and the guards.
"Balktapline," Rikard explained, "is an ore from which we extract some stuff that is essential to our flicker drives. I don't pretend to understand it, but star travel would be only about half as efficient without it. But I thought"—he turned back to the sergeant—"that balktapline was found only on Kohltri."
The sergeant sighed. "That's why this place is off-limits. Kohltri is the main supplier, but there are other deposits elsewhere. There aren't many, they're usually small and rather low grade, and nobody knows how or why they exist at all. And they're all under Federal protection, just in case the Kohltri sources become unavailable for, ah, whatever reason."
"I see," Rikard said. He had a pretty good idea of what those reasons might be and couldn't argue with the restriction. Balktapline ore was the most commercially important resource in the Federation, and gave it a small but significant advantage over their neighboring star nations. He could appreciate the government wanting to keep any other sources, however small and poor, for a backup.
"Is there any way," he said, "that you could maybe escort us to the cones? I've had some experience with balktapline and would just as soon not mess with it."
"I don't have the authority to do that," the sergeant said. "But it shouldn't be difficult for you to get the proper clearances. It's just a formality, really. If you check at the Federal Mines Offices back at Port KB-7, I'm sure they'll give you the permits you want, which is the only way you'll get the proper shielding, and then you won't need an escort. The people who want to explore these ruins usually get those permits before coming out."
Rikard saw no irony in the man's expression. "That's what comes," he said in disgust, "from not doing your homework. Is there anything specific I should ask for at the Mines Office?"
"Just ask for a clearance to get through Federal Zone 26653, and then you can go anywhere you want to in there." He jerked his head toward the fence. "But make sure the shielding has Federal approval stamps, or I won't be able to allow you anywhere near the balktapline fields regardless of permits. That stuff is nasty."
"I'm aware of that," Rikard said. "Thanks for your time." He turned back to his companions and they got into the floater. "Keep your gear on," Rikard said when the door had closed. He got behind the controls and drove off back the way they had come.
They drove away in silence for a while. Then Rikard said to Grayshard, "What do you know about balktapline?"
"If you mean its origins," Gray shard answered, "I know that it is a metamorphosed residue of Tathas architectural materials, laid down when the Tathas were a spacefaring race."
The Tathas were a people accidentally created by the near-mythic Taarshome, and had passed from the galaxy before natural planetary life had come into existence. One branch had remained and degenerated and changed, on the world known as Kohltri. But another had evolved, far away, into the ancestors of the Vaashka.
"I was hoping," Rikard said, "that you might have some inside information."
"I'm sorry. Everything I know about it I learned since I joined with you. I know that reserpine and anthrace are associated with balktapline."
"That's correct," Rikard said. "And if they're also present, that means that the Tathas were once here too, and in sufficient numbers to leave a residue. I find that very interesting."
"You would," Droagn said. "Show you an obscure race that nobody knows anything about, and you get all excited."
By this time they were out of sight of the post, and out of range of any detecting equipment it might have. Rikard started to circle around to the left. An hour later he turned back toward the fence again, floating down into a depression that was well below ground level. He stopped and they sat for a long moment, to see if they were subject to any probes, but there was nothing that could be detected by the equipment on the floater, so they got out to examine the fence.
And it was a formidable fence. It was not just that it was a high tensile fence, but they confirmed that it was carrying a field that effectively kept all life forms away. They determined this by the simple expedient of trying to get close enough to cut the wires, which they were unable to do. Rikard and Droagn then unpacked a couple of sophisticated detectors that they used to scan the fence, and the field it generated.
Though the fence was only about five meters high, that was higher than their heavy floater could go—no vehicle they could rent c
ould get more than two meters altitude. Rikard's scanner showed that the field around the fence extended above it for maybe a kilometer or more. Even if they could get over the fence some way, they still couldn't fly through the field. And yet, as Rikard examined the readouts on the field detector, he began to see a way around the problem. "I think I might be able to devise a shield," he said.
"There should be no difficulty at all," Grayshard agreed. "Oh, yes, there will." Droagn was moving the two long probes that extended from his detector over the surface of the fence, being careful to not actually touch it. "This thing's got alarms all over it. Cut the fence, breach the shield, and our friends back at the gate will know just exactly where and when."
"Not if I can help it." Rikard put his detector away and got out another device. "I thought this might come in handy." He put the heavy box down next to the fence, as close as he could get to it, and opened it up. From inside it he extended a long, telescoping gooseneck. He held the middle of the neck over his head, and switched on the machine, then touched the fence.
"You've just told them where we are," Droagn said.
"Not at all. I didn't penetrate the field, I just turned it back on itself." He hooked a section of the gooseneck to the fence, right above the box, as high as he could reach, then stretched it along the fence, above the ground until the arch it formed was wide enough for the floater to go through. He fastened it to the fence along the way, then led the end down to the ground and back to the box again.
"That was the easy part," he said. "Physical fencing is another thing." He got another box from the trailer, a larger one, and from it took a bundle of several dozen paired cables, with clips at the ends, which he fastened, side by side, to each strand of the fence. When he turned on the power in the box to which the cables were connected, the material of the fence became soft and elastic. He stretched it aside, out nearly to the field-distorting gooseneck, and held it in place with more clips. Then he got in the floater and drove it and the trailer through the gap.
Droagn and Grayshard walked through, and started taking the fence spreader down. Ten minutes later they were done, and there was no sign of their penetration. They got into the floater and Rikard drove toward the arcologies towering above them.
The bare ground became rubble-strewn as they neared the white ruins, stuff that had fallen down the pyramidal slopes of the long-abandoned structures. As the rubble got deeper, the floater, which could handle rough ground elsewhere, even in the badlands, began to have trouble. The pieces were too big to go over, too close together to go around, and they reluctantly came to the conclusion that they would have to go the rest of the way on foot, and once again would have to leave lots of their equipment behind. Rikard found a place where they could hide the floater and trailer in the rubble, and they covered it with optical tarps so that it looked just like the ground. Unless someone literally stumbled on it by accident, it could be found only by following the coded beacon on board, which was set so that only the receivers that each of them carried would get the signal.
Before they set out Rikard went back inside the floater and put on his recording helmet. He got his holster out of the dashboard compartment, and strapped on his gun. He'd had his environment suit modified so that he could still make the connection between the circuits in the gun, his special glove, and his hand. Then they loaded four small floater carts with what they could in the way of excavation equipment, leaving room for a large gray case with black reinforcements and fastenings.
They set off on foot, towing the small floaters, and worked their way between the larger chunks of fallen rubble. There was an arcological structure immediately in front of them, so they angled to the right in order to pass between it and its neighbor. But as they neared the corner of the pyramid the ground became even worse, and it began to look as if they might have to leave even the carts behind.
They struggled on, even so. Outlying buttresses that had collapsed added to the debris, and the easiest route was directly toward the structure itself. They could see what looked like several entrances at the lowest level, and one that was not too badly blocked by rubble. They went toward it.
When they got inside they found that the going was almost as bad as outside. The floor was covered with broken stone and concrete, rusted chunks of steel, and drifts of dust, mostly from the ceiling above, and from several floors above that, all the way to the slanting outer wall, through which they could see the gray, always overcast sky. Some interior walls had fallen, but others were still standing. They started to go through to the other side when Droagn paused. He reached up to touch the Prime, which he wore under his protective head covering. "There's life all around us," he said.
Rikard turned up the gain on his external mikes. Now he appreciated the sergeant's policy. He heard occasional slithers, like snakes or lizards, off in the darker places.
They went on, and kept to where it was light. Grayshard kept his micropulse drawn. Droagn's weapon of choice was, as usual, something he could swing. It looked like a two-meter staff, but it was made of superhard metal and contained inertial enhancers that worked with either a swing or a thrust. They passed through the ground floor of the arcology.
"I recognize this place now," Rikard said. "It was built by a people called Griem. They were a species of arachnoids. They had a stellar civilization some forty thousand years ago, and it lasted about three thousand years before they destroyed themselves in some kind of internal conflict."
As they went through now open places on the far side of the ruin they still heard the slithering—more like centipedes than snakes—back in the remoter regions, but saw nothing. They got to the inner edge of the arcology complex, passed through a hole in the wall, and saw a rubble-strewn parkway below them. They were about a hundred meters up the side of the structure. The next ring of ruins, a wall of gray and amber columns, concealed the cyclopean cones from them.
The slope down to the parkway was actually easier to traverse than the flat ground outside the ruins, since much of the rubble had here rolled down and dispersed itself across a broader area. As they neared the bottom something large flew overhead and circled, on four long, translucent wings, like a dragonfly, then flew away.
They crossed the parkway toward the ring of ruined columns. Halfway there they frightened some small furry things that hurried away among the weathered rubble.
"Now that is unusual," Rikard said. "Native life is all exoskeletal, so those have to be the descendants of some pets somebody left behind."
The ring of ruins was composed of triangular columns joined together at their edges and rather broken near the top, though there was a lot less rubble here than near the arcologies. There were opaque window recesses in all the column walls, starting about thirty meters up. Half concealed by piles of gravel-sized rubble were several doorways.
As they approached the doorway most exposed Rikard got the feeling that something was watching them, or following them, but Droagn could detect no intelligence. They cleared the doorway as much as they needed to, and entered the ruins.
There were no floors above the ground in the first column, it just went right up to the now-open sky. The outer wall had only the one door, and the windows higher up, with no evidence that there ever were any floors above. In this column there were two inner walls, and each had a broad door at ground level and no openings above at all.
They passed through the nearest door, into another triangular column, like the first with no floors for its entire height, but with openings about halfway up into the nearest adjacent columns.
They went on to the next column. The walls between were only a centimeter thick, though strong enough to have supported their full height for all this time—however long it was. Rikard tried to think of who the builders might have been, but though he could remember having read something about them when he was in school, he couldn't bring anything more to mind.
The interiors of the next few columns were strange and tall, with tall doorway
s between them, and occasionally stairways that climbed the inside walls to other doorways high above, sometimes two or three above each other.
As they progressed they found that farther in there had been considerable damage, though the way was fairly easy since the rubble took much less space than that of the arcologies. They kept to their course, even though they had to go by angles.
After a while Rikard became aware that he was feeling a bit strange, and when he thought about it he realized that he'd begun to feel like this some time back. He wanted to slow down. He felt like his friends were a bit too close to him. It seemed as though, even in here with only the overcast sky far overhead, it was a bit too bright.
It was not an unfamiliar feeling, though he'd experienced it only twice before. At this moment it was so subtle that he might not have drawn the inevitable conclusion, but since he knew there was balktapline under the ruins here, he immediately recognized it as the Tathas effect, that bizarre psychosis induced by the residuum of their construction materials, which had been created to support and reinforce their psychic presence, and which had become insane even as they had, so long ago, when they had lost their purpose and begun the long descent into nonsentience.
"We're going to wish we had that shielding," he said.
The sensation got stronger as they went until Rikard began to feel, rather than see, a dark landscape, just out of the edges of his perception, superimposed on the dim walls of the triangular columns through which they walked.
Grayshard began to feel it too. "I'm surprised," he said. "I would have thought that I was immune." He was fascinated by the experience. "It rather resembles the Vaashka combat projection, but it is much different in flavor. It's more a constant static instead of a transient dynamic. And it is insane."