[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  That should have been his! Ralston calmed himself as the seven graduate students began filtering into the room. What Leonore Disa had said about these being the lowliest in the department carried more than a hint of truth. Two of them Ralston suspected to be felons placed in a rehabilitation program. They spent their time huddled together, whispering behind cupped hands and furtively studying the others. He vowed to inventory his equipment before leaving the ship and after uncrating on Alpha 3.

  Three more drifted in. He almost laughed aloud at that. Not only did they simply hang like sacks of dirty laundry, they went through their studies in the same lackluster fashion—they existed and little else.

  De la Cruz and Leonore followed the others in.

  Ralston studied both of them more closely, damning himself for not paying more attention earlier in the trip. Seven weeks had been wasted, as far as he was concerned. Of the pair, Leonore seemed the more enigmatic and promising as a student. He believed she had studied his dissertation closely but hadn’t wanted to admit it. Some students asked questions to which they already knew the answers, thinking they could curry favor by looking bright. Leonore didn’t seem that type. But what did drive her? While she was far from the top of the graduate crop, she wasn’t simply squeaking by on the bottom like Asan and Lantalman.

  He had to face the possibility that it had been his own aloofness that kept her from speaking up sooner.

  Yago de la Cruz went hand-over-hand along one of the elastic ropes and positioned himself at the nominal “top” of the room. From this lofty perch, he glowered at the others.

  Ralston had seen de la Cruz’s type before. Spoiled rich bastard thrust into a world where money no longer bought his slightest whim. Ralston wondered how long it would be before de la Cruz offered him a bribe in return for his vote of approval before a dissertation committee.

  Ralston slumped and folded himself into a loose sphere. Considering the probity of others in the archaeology department at Ilium, they might be amenable to a little extra money under the table. Even the department head might be bought for a substantial contribution in the form of unrestricted research grants. Ralston had to face the possibility that he alone in the department couldn’t be bribed, that academic honesty meant something to him alone.

  Always the rebel, Uzoma had said.

  “Citizens,” Ralston said, almost shouting to be heard, and pulling out from his comfortable position and pressing himself against a far wall, legs entwined in the elastic. “You’ve heard of the excellent navigation done by the pilot.” Heads bobbed. He doubted many had heard or cared. For them this was little more than a vacation. In spite of his classes on field procedures he doubted any truly understood the work involved with a dig. That would change. Soon.

  “We will orbit Alpha 3, launch our survey satellites and—yes, Citizen de la Cruz?”

  “Why bother with new satellite recon?” the man demanded, his chin thrust out truculently. He reminded Ralston of a dog refusing to release an innocent victim. “We already have the preliminary ones. Their photos are better than we can take.”

  ”I disagree. The exploration team that found Alpha 3 launched six satellites, most of them designed to detect life. Not the remnants of life,” Ralston said. He shoved himself into the center of the room. He knew how a spider felt when it left the security of its web. With a quick grab, he caught a rope and found the appropriate spot to address his students. De la Cruz hung behind him, but Ralston ignored this. The other six floated where he could see them.

  “An archaeologist has to be as much an electronics expert as a good scientist. We will be cut off from support and will need to repair our equipment. Who’s taken the computer archaeology course?” All indicated that they had, but Ralston discounted any expertise since Pieter Nordon taught the course.

  Nordon’s technical abilities ran more to shovel than ultrasonic digger. Ralston knew Nordon hadn’t wanted the course but had been forced into teaching it when it had come up on the seniority rotation. Nordon had been low man on the totem pole.

  “The satellite will get us a better look at the ruins we’re to explore.” Ralston experienced a rush of enthusiasm. Back in the field! To be on a dig again, even an insignificant one, was a world better than lecturing or listening to dull seminars given by tenured members of the department. “Alpha 3’s population died off approximately ten thousand standard years ago. That, hmmm, makes it close to ninety-two hundred local years ago.”

  “What killed the geeks off?” de la Cruz asked.

  “The population, Citizen de la Cruz,” Ralston said pointedly. “We will refer to the natives in the proper fashion. There wasn’t any indication of the cause of decline by prelim reconnaissance. That’s part of our job. The Alpha 3 natives weren’t spacefaring, even to nearby planets, but their level of development might be very close. There will be enough information to go around,” he finished.

  No one looked excited, Ralston thought. Except—maybe—Leonore Disa. She was holding in her emotions, and only small muscle twitches were betraying her.

  Leonore shifted when she noticed his direct gaze. She spoke up. “How do we go about choosing a topic for our dissertations?”

  “Whatever interests you,” Ralston said, surprised. Even such an uninspiring group of students ought to know better.

  “Some of the other professors assign topics.”

  That didn’t come as a shock. “I don’t believe in such practices. Choose a topic of interest—and significant importance to the field of archaeology. You are expected to demonstrate imagination, innovation, and technical ability in how you pursue your research. I see no way to dictate a topic and then expect what must be the finest work of your career. Only when you’re personally motivated, excited, can you possibly do this.”

  He looked around the small sphere of faces and shook his head. No excitement at being in the field. No thrill for potential discovery. Even worse, he detected no commitment to archaeology among his group. Why did any of them bother coming on the dig? Why bother putting in the long years needed to get a degree? They had guaranteed themselves a safe future when they had passed the tests and legally became citizens. Most of the students at Ilium came from wealthy families. What prestige did they find in a doctorate of archaeology? He hadn’t found any.

  “I can’t say what we’ll discover on the planet, but it won’t conform to any preconceived notions. Each culture is distinct, with points of interest and real opportunity for advancing knowledge.” Ralston wound down his pep talk. He found it hard to get too enthused over a pre-spaceflight planetary culture that had slipped into oblivion. Better to study a post-spaceflight world such as Proteus 4.

  Damn Velasquez and his political maneuvers!

  “You each have your duties. Go and get ready. We’ll launch the survey satellites in four hours. By the time we’re ready to ground, they ought to have good photos.”

  “How long will it take to analyze the photos and choose a site?” asked Leonore.

  “With luck, we can get the largest city’s ruins spotted and begin there within a day.” His tone told them this conference had come to an end. They left awkwardly.

  Ralston said nothing as Yago de la Cruz shot by, giving him a spur expression. Michael Ralston retreated to the isolation afforded by the center of the room and simply hung, lost in his own irresolute thoughts. Alpha 3 had to reveal something. He refused to waste precious time on a worthless planet.

  His own mood darkened, though. No one at the University of Ilium was likely to give him a choice assignment, even if he did his best here. On Alpha 3 he’d be lucky to find anything worthy of a publication, anything more advanced than mud and fire-hardened sticks.

  Damn!

  THREE

  Michael Ralston craned his head back until his neck developed a muscle spasm. He rubbed the spot but kept scanning the pitch black sky of Alpha 3 for the tiny, moving dots of his satellites.

  The landing had gone smoothly, the shuttle setting them down
less than a kilometer from the spot with the most prominent ruins. He had noticed Leonore Disa had been excited by the nearness to the solar physics research station, even if he hadn’t been. The University facilities there were less than five kilometers away. But she hadn’t allowed this to interfere with her work. She and Ralston had ended up doing most of the work while the others flittered about ineffectually. Since time had been a factor and the pilot had badgered them constantly from orbit for the return of the robot shuttle, Ralston hadn’t driven the others as he might have.

  Simply being grounded gave him renewed energy.

  “There’s one, Doctor,” Leonore Disa said. He tried to follow the direction of her pointing finger. All he could look at was the pale orange and blue glow from the jewelry plates flashing just below the surface of her skin.

  “Can you turn those damned things off?” he asked querulously. “Any light at all kills my night vision.”

  Ralston didn’t see what the woman did but the plates blinked once before fading.

  “Thank you. Now where did you spot it? Oh, that one.” He frowned, his mind working over the orbits of the six satellites. “That’s not one of ours. Too low in the sky.”

  “Might be one of the solar physics satellites,” Leonore said.

  Ralston controlled his anger at the mere mention of the University’s solar physics station. No one had told him that another department had been on planet for three months. Something about the Alpha primary interested them. All he knew was that the physicist in charge had stopped by shortly after they’d grounded to warn him about higher than normal levels of solar radiation.

  Ralston rubbed sunburned cheeks and brushed away the flaking skin. Their supplies hadn’t included much in the way of sun screen, and he had let the students use most of what had been brought—the preliminary survey hadn’t indicated it would be needed on a planet circling a G5 yellow-orange star. Even with a perigee of 0.82 standard A.U., Alpha Prime appeared less than four-fifths as large as the Earth’s sun.

  Ralston looked around the night-shrouded muddy plains where he and Leonore had come to pick up the latest intelligence from their photo satellite. In a way, Alpha 3 reminded him of Earth. It had been too many years since he’d been home—and for him, Earth would always be home. Novo Terra had become the center of human-dominated space after the wars had wiped out most of Earth’s temperate zones, relegating it to a minor role among the stars, but Ralston felt that special bond between a man and his birthplace.

  His only real regrets, other than the stupidity of the four-day nuclear exchange, were the losses of Catal Huyuk, the Ming Tombs, Puye and Chaco and Mesa Verde, and the entire Olduvai Gorge. This latter hadn’t gone up in a radioactive cloud but had been destroyed by the huge numbers of people fleeing the higher latitudes. Ralston shifted from one foot to the other. The lewd sucking noise brought him back to the reality of Alpha 3 and the persistent rainstorms.

  “Going to rain again,” he muttered. Heavy, lead-bottomed clouds dotted the night sky, blocking off many of the almost-familiar constellations.

  “Doesn’t it ever stop? Why can’t some of those hotshots over at Solar Base 1 do a better job of predicting the showers?” asked Leonore Disa. “That’s supposed to be their field.”

  “Didn’t know that,” said Ralston, distracted. No one had told him anything about the solar physics research being done, and he didn’t really care. That was out of his area of expertise. He had come to Alpha 3 to dig, and that’s all he intended to do. Fraternizing with physicists didn’t strike him as decent. They were too strange and would only divert him. When Justine Rasmussen had stopped by to greet them, it had wasted an hour.

  “There! That’s it.” He swung around the hand-held half-meter parabolic dish, sighted through the axis optics, and placed the satellite on the cross hairs. A tiny red light flashed when he successfully locked on and received the recognition signal. Ralston flipped a tiny switch; a microburst went to the satellite and convinced the block circuits to release their precious information. In less than ten seconds Ralston had received two days’ recon data.

  He switched off the equipment and reslung it on his back. “That ought to do it. Wind and rain patterns as well as the radar images. Want to help me analyze it?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? You’re out here to learn.” Ralston smiled. “You’re also along to do all the chores I detest. I hate poring over this type of data. I’d rather be at the bottom of a trench with an ultrasonic.”

  “That seems too dreary for words,” Leonore said.

  They sloughed their way across the plain and down into the lowlands, near a river where the largest ruins had been detected. Few walls extended above ground level, having been eroded away by centuries of wind and the incessant downpour. Every dig held its challenges. Alpha 3’s seemed to be one of endurance. The rains ruined most carbon dating, forcing them to use other means to date the artifacts found.

  “I read something once about Chinese water torture,” Leonore said. “I think Muckup is it. All the time dripping on the top of my head. I swear, my brain cavity sounds like a drum.”

  Ralston sighed at the name the students had given the planet, tightening his own collar against the burgeoning rain. While picking up the satellite signal, it had been almost clear. Less than halfway back to camp a light mist had formed. Now gravid drops splattered heavily on them and gave birth to wet misery. Before they would reach shelter, they’d be drenched.

  “Wear a hat,” was all the advice he gave her.

  Ralston and Leonore ducked under the low overhang and into his shelter. Rain beat a heavy tattoo against the plastic before running off to trenches he’d dug along the edges of the slope-roofed shelter. Ralston unslung the pack with the electronics and pulled out the small block circuit holding the data. He popped it into a viewer and focused against the back wall.

  They studied frame after frame in silence, each taking notes and cross-referring what they saw. The computer automatically plotted isanemones and isotherms and detailed the information in a miniature map being developed at the lower side of the display. From this they might be able to determine the effects of erosion and better date the ruins. Ralston finished with one and flipped to the next, frowned, then reversed to bring the prior picture into sharper focus.

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  “Can’t say for sure. Look at this. A good view of the city. Here’s where we started with the cleaners. The computer’s this dot. But what’s all this? The lines and boxes?” He indicated the spot in the lower corner.

  “That’d be about two kilometers away,” Leonore said, working on the scaler. “How’d you take these shots?”

  “Synthetic aperture radar. These aren’t surface striations. It shows up off the major isanemones. They’re just under the mud.”

  “Some structure that got buried. It could happen easily here.” Leonore’s tone indicated she saw nothing unusual in this discovery. Ralston had to admit the rains lent credence to such a theory.

  But something that wouldn’t go away kept flitting at the corners of his mind. Ralston finally pushed it aside and went on. In less than an hour, they had finished their mapping.

  Leonore tapped her field computer and said, “Time to let it all digest.”

  “Time to get some sleep. I want to be up early in the morning to check out how the dig’s going.”

  Leonore laughed lightly, the sound of silver chimes muffled by the patter of falling rain. “You’d work eighteen hours a day, if you could.”

  “Local day’s only seventeen and a half,” he said without thinking.

  “I rest my case. Good night, Dr. Ralston.”

  “Good night, Citizen.”

  She left, a sudden rush of humid air entering to mark her passage. Ralston hardly noticed. He turned on the projector again and just stared at the patterns as if they might come alive and explain themselves to him. He fell asleep at the table, head on folded arms, dreaming of those
hidden shapes.

  “No, that’s not the way!” he shouted. Ralston jumped down into the trench beside Asan. The graduate student backed off as if he’d been caught robbing the chancellor’s wife of her family tiara. “Look. You’ve got to do this carefully, gently, as if you were making love to a sensitive woman.”

  His fingers stroked lovingly over the controls. The ultrasonic digger’s pitch lowered, mellowed. Ralston guided the device forward millimeter by slow millimeter. Mud and grime vanished and a concrete foundation appeared. More quick touches produced a neat line of five green lights indicating that the machine had been programmed successfully and now worked at removing caked on grime and recording all data without destroying the object of study.

  “There’s no rush. If you had to do this by hand, it’d take months. The digger lets you go off and grab a nap now and again. You do have the alarm on it set?” Ralston saw Asan’s furtive eye movements. That could mean only that the man knew nothing of what he did. Ralston shook his head and dropped into the mud-filled trench beside the digger. The graduate student hadn’t bothered to set the alarm.

  “How do you expect to find anything important?” Ralston asked. “You’ve got to use the equipment to the fullest.”

  “There’s nothing of importance to find,” came de la Cruz’s sour words.

  Ralston left Asan to ponder the error of his ways and vaulted out of the trench. His boots sank only a centimeter into the muck; they’d had a lucky two days without rain. He might have sunk in over the top of his boot, otherwise.

  “Are you one of those rarities we see mentioned on the evening vidnews, Citizen de la Cruz?”

  “What do you mean?” De la Cruz gave Ralston a suspicious look.