by James Warner
That day was spent downloading everything I could get into the Hornet. I took holos of buildings, furniture, art, even some plant specimens for analysis; it was uncanny how much this place reminded me of Earth. After a full day of climbing, walking, bending and talking to myself it was nice to hear from Meph.
“Captain how are you doing?” he asked, climbing from the sled. I was glad to see he hadn’t been trapped in the sphere.
“Why are you here, Meph? Did you get chased out?” I asked.
“Sort of,” he replied innocuously.
We were in the central square. Around us stood the silent buildings of what must have been a government gone mad. What else could explain the destruction of a planetary civilization? In the last day I had found that most of the ruins here were well enough preserved to be reconstructed by an archeological team from Central. I had tried to stay out of as many buildings as was humanly possible, given my keen interest in the late occupants of this place.
In one of the large buildings I had found a decorative mosaic depicting what appeared to be normal life around here. It was a nice montage of tiles which still held their color after all these years.
“Hey Meph, did you see that mosaic: It looked remarkably like a subway wall I remembered from a tour of the ruins of Los Angeles on Earth when I was a child. These people could have been my ancestors, had they not been blown up, or imploded. The time span was about right.”
But I hadn’t found any trace of space flight, other than our Library friend, who was not of this world at all.
“Captain,” Sassy called on the comm link. “I have been layering the site per standard archaeological practice and my sensors have located a set of three gold tablets 180 feet below the city. The path is via elevators and an underground transport system located in one of the buildings on your right. East 12º from North will lead you to the doorway that is the entrance of the building. This building appears to be a mass transit terminal.”
“Very well, Sassy. Thank you for this information. We will check it out immediately. Do your sensors indicate that the equipment is operational?”
“The system is powered by a nuclear power generator which is only half way through its fuel life. There are no operations at this time. But Captain, you will note that the general technology and structural techniques are more similar to the Library sphere than to the native structures in the city. And the entire underground system is not directly connected with the city’s rapid transit system. There is a sealed elevator in the lowest level of the city’s system that has electrical power currently operating maintenance systems in the elevator car. The entire city system is not functioning, although the reactor is supplying power to it. There appear to be several breaks in the conduits from the power source to the city underground system. This is not the case with the other, deeper system.”
Meph and I had been walking toward the terminal building that Sassy had pointed out while taking note of this additional information. The entry was a revolving door, I swear just like a hotel I had visited in London on Newearth, which, I was told, was an exact copy of a hotel somewhere on Earth. Round and round goes the game, ever new and ever the same. Anyway, this door was firmly locked and corroded shut.
“Meph, I want in here. Go around the block and see if there is any other way into the building while I work on getting this door open.”
I watched Meph bounce down the street and around the corner, just like a happy puppy. I hadn’t realized what his normal method of travel was. The Hornet must be very confining for him. There was definitely nowhere for him to bounce in there. I decided to keep this in mind and let him get out on planet surface hikes with me as much as possible.
I attacked the door with the vibro-file. The corrosion was easy to scrape off, but the lock wouldn’t budge. So I called the sled over and rummaged in the toolbox, looking for something that would shave off the lock without ruining the door. There was a needle beam I didn’t remember putting in there. It should be perfect.
The needle beam cut through the lock like the bolt was putty – simple and only one gouge where I had slipped a bit. I called Meph and then went in the creaking, protesting door. He was bouncing toward me across the main lobby.
“The back door was open, just rusted shut. I pushed on it a little after oiling the hinges and it opened right up.
“That’s nice Meph.” I said. “Let’s explore.”
We went down the stairwell, not trusting any of the mechanical equipment. There were no lights. I jotted down the markings at each level, as that might help translate their language. At the 9th and bottom level we opened the door. Meph’s oiling system worked fine as there was no lock on the door and I set up a floodlight. The platform was fairly small, with tracks for two trains. One seemed set up for through traffic and one for loading and unloading. There was a train on the loading track. It looked like all subway trains look: large windows, bullet-shaped, we could have been on any human inhabited planet.
“Do you have subways like this on your world, Meph?”
“No Captain. We use submarines on a monorail system.”
The trains were apparently electro-magnetically supported off the tracks when running. This one was resting on the power-down wheels. I had the eerie feeling that if we only had power; we could ride clear to the next city. However my common sense told me we would run into a cave-in not far outside of the city in either direction.
“Sassy, where is this elevator?”
“The elevator door is on the back wall of the controller’s office, next to the computer terminal. By the way Captain, the computer is operational according to my sensor readings. However I can’t communicate with it.”
“Thanks Sassy,” I replied. This was getting curiouser and curiouser, to quote an ancient saying.
We found the controller’s office and the door was locked. I needled it open and we both made a beeline for the computer. It looked like a standard old-fashioned human terminal, with a keyboard, a screen and wires going down into the desk. Meph found the on/off switch on the back of the monitor and turned it on. A small green l.e.d. lit up and a word of some sort appeared at the upper right corner of the screen. Meph immediately started unscrewing the back of the desk, looking for the power source. I, meanwhile, pecked at the unfamiliar oval keyboard, trying to make the machine do something. After total frustration set in I stepped back and tried to get the overall pattern of the keys, hoping to find some sort of sense in it.
I noticed that there were three distinct groups of keys: a large central group and two smaller groups on either side. Each of the keys in the central group was of the same shape, truncated trapezoidal. The keys in the outer groups, however, were varied from truncated trapezoidal to truncated pyramidal, oblong, rectangular and so forth. It reminded me of a picture I had seen of an early computer, before voice interfaces became common. The keys had alien writing on them. So I approached the keyboard and tried again. This time I pressed one of the keys in the left group. This caused a row of words to appear across the top of the screen, outlined in colors and with one of them blinking. So I knew that there were actually active programs here.
“Sassy, I’m going to get as much on the screen as possible for you. See what you can make of it.”
“Captain, I recognize the symbols on the screen now as stylized copies of the level markings you wrote on the stylus interface as you were descending. They represent the levels of this station, top to bottom reading on the screen from right to left.”
Well! A breakthrough! “Okay Sassy. Stay hooked up here while I try a few more things.”
Just then the screen went blank and Meph grunted something sibilant in his own language.
“Hey! What did you do?” I yelled at him.
“Sorry Captain. I accidentally triggered a security system. Just a moment and I’ll have the machine back on.”
I sat grumpily in the chair and it disintegrated under me. The screen came back up. I realized what was wrong. I was hun
gry.
“Hey Meph, sorry I yelled. Are you hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, sir, I think I am. I haven’t eaten anything since you left the Ancient sphere thing.”
“Let’s eat, this stuff will keep,” I said.
After a mediocre field ration dinner of preserved salmon, salad and a chocolate chip cookie each (that tasted like a King’s feast to us), we decided to leave the computer and go on to the elevator. Again, as in the Library ship, it opened to my touch, this time on a panel next to the door. No broken down technology here. And again it was all the same as the Artifact material.
We got in and there were only two touch pads on the wall. Deciding to trust the ancient technology here, I touched the top one and the door opened again. Well that took care of our escape route. Then I touched the lower one and down we went. Or I presume it was down. There was no sensation of moving; only a slight air pressure adjustment. In moments we were “there” and the door opened and I saw, as the car slowed the last half an inch that we had actually gone down.
We stepped out into a spacious lounge. All the furniture was oversized. There were three chairs quite nicely upholstered and pleasantly colored with Artifact frameworks with the dark gray base material and the colored specks and strings in it and light gray upholstery that looked like fabric or plastic. Each chair had a reading table beside it. There was no discernable deterioration in any of the materials. This room could have been any upscale executive’s reception office. There on the wall behind clear sliding doors inside an Artifact material display case were the gold tablets.
“Sassy, are these the gold tablets you discovered?” “Ye...” the Hornet began to reply and was immediately cut off.
I turned to Meph and he was caught in some sort of stasis field, frozen still as he was a moment ago, not even blinking. I felt nothing.
A female sounding voice said from ahead, as the door in the far wall opened to a softly lit room, “Come in, daughter.”
I felt a gentle tug pulling me that way. I could make out a number of small yellowish lights in the room ahead, blinking on the floor. The tugging became more insistent and I decided to again follow the ‘yellow brick road’.
As I entered the room the door closed with a soft sigh. I looked around. In the subdued indirect lighting there were a great deal of electronics built into the walls here and one very comfortable looking chair. There was a very faint smell of electronics in the air. I chose discretion and sat in the chair. Invisible restraints held me securely, but comfortably. A holo screen slid down from the ceiling. I felt the tickle of a neural connection in the back of my neck. “Oh shit.” I exclaimed under my breath. What had I gotten myself into this time? It didn’t hurt, though. I hoped I wouldn’t bleed to death.
It didn’t take long to find out. I went into alpha state almost immediately. Then I became aware of nearly subliminal images, sounds and feelings of an ancient culture. At last maybe I would be able to find out who our ancient benefactors were.
After what seemed like lifetimes, I awoke from a restful sleep to find myself still in the chair and still hooked up.
“Why me?” I half whispered to myself. The holo screen in front of me echoed these words in the language of this world. And I knew that.
“You have been chosen by a higher authority to be the recipient of the cultural record of this world. In each fertilization place we set up a repository of the culture as it evolves as a permanent record should the culture self-destruct, as this one has. You are the first representative from a fertilized world to enter this repository. You have been instructed in all the recorded information we contain, as well as our own language which is your birthright.”
As this was felt and heard inside me, I also saw and read it on the screen in front of me. Some education! And again, I was starving. I realized by monitoring my physiological condition I must have been here for at least 24 hours. But I felt great! “What are your instructions?” the chair asked.
This was not expected. “Well, I would like to have my spacecraft given all the information you have given me. Then I would like to have your technical structural design information also sent to my spacecraft. Thirdly, I would like to rejoin my nonhuman companion.”
“These things are done,” the voice said. The hookup was removed from my neck, the holo screen slid back into the ceiling and the door opened to a very curious Meph.
“Captain!” he exclaimed. “Are you okay? You look terrible!”
“Thanks Meph. I’m glad to see you, too.”
“You must be starving. I have a meal already here. I made it up as soon as the stasis field lifted. Here, try this delicious turtle soup and some great herb tea.” He walked into the room, so I wouldn’t get up out of the chair and gave me the items on a makeshift tray. It was great. Even for food packs.
I turned around. “Do you see any holes in the back of my head or neck?”
“Nope, just as humanly pretty as always.” He said.
He must have missed me.
As I recovered my strength, I went with Meph back into the reception room. There were the gold tablets. But now they looked somewhat familiar. Then I realized that I had also been given instruction in the Ancients’ language. I could actually read the tablets! Well, after all the years of suspense it was a little anticlimactic to just sit there and read off the message. But still, I felt my sense of history required that I do it.
“Meph would you like to know what these tablets say?”
“What? You mean you were programmed with their message, Captain?”
“No Meph, I mean I can actually read them now.”
“Wow, would I!”
“Okay Meph, here is the message we have been waiting to hear for the last hundred thousand years: “Greetings, Children. We welcome your discovery of your ancestry and heritage. We fertilized this world and others like it with the intent of providing the advantages of our civilization throughout this galaxy. You will find near here a Library of all the knowledge we have accumulated in the seventy-eight thousand years our civilization has existed. This Library is protected and can only be opened by one of the races from a world we have seeded. In the Library are the answers to all your questions. The second tablet contains the location and exact directions on how to locate and enter this Library. May the gods who created us be with you and grant your race long life.”
As I finished reading aloud the message, my mind was whirling with possibilities. Where were the Libraries on the other worlds where tablets had been found? Were the tablets with instructions intact?
“Captain, this is remarkable. What do we do now?” “A good question, Meph.” I answered, still thinking
of possibilities. “Sassy, have you been monitoring?”
“Of course, Captain. That’s why you bring me along.”
“Good.”
“Meph, I have been given the entire cultural record stored here of the race on this planet which committed suicide. I have been given their language, sample records of their arts, the whole thing. I feel as if I had been raised here. I know exactly how and when they died. It’s a strange, different way of knowing about another culture. Almost, well, as a native, not a historian or Archaeologist.”
“So they did commit suicide.”
“Yes. Our worst fears came to pass.”
“I wonder why,” Meph mused.
“My home world Earth came close twice.”
“Not mine. I suppose it’s a Human thing.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Do you feel healthy enough now to go do something else?”
“Sure. Thanks. Meph, the more I see of this place the more I think I might like to come back here to live when I retire.”
“Are you sure you’re not thinking of ending your career so soon, sir?” he asked reluctantly, with a wistful air.
“No way Jose!” I strode to the ancient elevator and opened the door. “Coming Mate?”
“Yes, SIR.”
The t
rip back to the surface was uneventful. We took the ancient elevator then the steps back to the surface following our path down. I was pensive and Meph gave me the time I needed to sort out what to do next. The exercise returning up the stairs gave me time to let my subliminal thought processes work.
We retrieved all our gear and returned to the Hornet in the lander Meph had brought.
“You know, Meph, I still don’t know who the Parent race was, or is, or whatever. Although I now understand their language, I was given absolutely no data on their origin or anything. What did you find out in the Library?”
“Not much Captain. I was so interested in the technology that I’m afraid I didn’t look into the history too much. But I did get a star chart sent to the Hornet that maps all their exploration paths, but no indication of a source. It was just a complex web of lines on the 3D chart.”