“What is above?” Bria asked, pointing. Two hexagonal entrances were cut into the stone of the cliff. The first was about twenty meters straight above the door, the second another twenty meters above that. Six triangles of metal surrounded each entrance, like the open petals of a metal flower.
Eydis shook her head. “Those are just vents, I think. They reach through to the dome of the library, inside. There is some natural light in the library. Probably the light comes through that top vent, and the lower one is just for air.” Eydis put her hands on her hips and frowned at the sea. “We may have to wait. We have only an hour before the waves start to splash against the entrance to the library. An hour after that, it will be underwater. Eventually, the lower of those two vents will be underwater, or nearly so. Those vents close up also. When the door and the vents seal, they remain closed for nearly a day, till the tides recede.”
“Kriani?” Bria asked.
“Probably not,” Eydis said. “I mean: just one, the librarian, who acts as a kind of curator and preservationist. I don’t think there’ll be others. The Kriani mostly hate the place. Officially, anyway. This library is a record of Ulltrian history, and so it is a record of their own slave history.”
Tarkos turned around. The cruiser, no longer cloaked, stood behind them with its three legs sunken into the mossy ground cover. Behind the ship, a low forest reached to distant hills. Thick vines knotted through the wide, short trees, forming an impenetrable foliage. The leaves on all the plants were long and narrow, and waved in the rising wind. Eydis had told Tarkos the plants had adapted to survive frequent hurricane winds. Their leaves all retracted at night and during storms. And, many of the plants were carnivorous. The storm wind, she had told him, was a blessing; without it, the air would be thick with small biting bugs that could swarm in dangerous quantities, sometimes covering an organism and killing it with a million stings and bites.
Somewhere in the distance, a ship cracked the sound barrier. Tarkos and Bria turned their heads, but could not discern the direction of the sound.
“What about other Kriani?” Tarkos asked. “On the other side of that forest?”
Eydis frowned. “The nearest city is about ten kilomeasures that way,” she pointed down the shoreline. “But with this storm coming, they should lock down their homes. Even if there is some kind of civil war, I would expect no walking around in a hurricane.”
Bria turned to face the ship. Tarkos felt the ping of her command to the cruiser: a second later, a loud thump sounded as a cylinder, the size of Tarkos’s arm, shot from the cruiser’s ventral fin. It unfolded wings as it arced overhead. The wings caught the air, the small drone banked, and then shot off toward the direction Eydis had pointed. Bria stared at the ground, reading telemetry data. Finally, she said, “No visible Kriani within a kilomeasure.”
Bria pointed at Eydis. “You will come with me to the front door.”
“Don’t you think you have to tell me first why it’s so important to get this information? I mean, why should I help you? You’ve not told me why. I’m a secondary citizen of the Galactic Alliance, but that doesn’t mean I’m on call for every Harmonizer that gives me an order. And I left valuable notes and research materials back at the palace of state. You can’t just expect me to run off with you into space. What’s this all about?”
Bria ignored the question. Instead, she pointed at Tarkos. “We race storm. Redundancy required. You climb down cliff. To hexagonal entrance. Retrieve records, if we cannot.”
Tarkos straightened. “Yes, Commander.”
Bria turned toward the ship and used her suit radio to call Tiklik’al’Takas. After a moment, the thin robot unfolded through the doorway.
“I have received your message,” it said. “The signal reminds me of cesium burning.”
“Can climb stone?” Bria asked.
“These limbs are capable of finding sufficient friction on most stone surfaces to suspend my weight in this gravity.”
“Two then,” Bria said, pointing at Tarkos and then the robot. “One Predator. One who can interpret the book.” She turned to Eydis. “Archeologist: tell robot how to find book.”
“You’re very direct, Sussurat. I respect that. But I need some answers. What are we doing here?”
“You are secondary citizen,” Bria said. “Loyal to Alliance. Alliance needs this information.”
The human woman frowned, waiting, but Bria said nothing more. She looked to Tarkos and he looked away. He would rather have told Eydis everything, earning her willing cooperation. But he did not judge is so important that it merited challenging Bria.
Finally, Eydis sighed, and walked to the thin robot’s side.
“You’ll descend the stairs?” Tarkos asked Bria. “Should we leave the others here, on the ship?”
Bria growled slightly in consideration. “Must have Kirt.”
Tarkos nodded. “Everyone but Gowgoroup, then.” He climbed into the cruiser. But when he emerged several minutes later, the OnUnAn followed him out, walking with thudding steps in its quadrupedal armored encounter vehicle. Bria seemed unsurprised.
“I come,” its many voices called over loudspeakers. “It is foolish to splinter a body, even a body made of useless singletons. But I, I, I, I demand that you wait, until the tides recede. One that swims currents gets swept apart.”
Ki’Ki’Tilish spidered down beside the OnUnAn. Her legs, thin even in her silvery encounter suit, seemed to tentatively test and find distasteful the soft covering of moss. She kept no one foot on the ground for more then a second, continuously shifting her weight.
“It is too dangerous,” the OnUnAn repeated. “Our mission is not time limited!” Several of the other slugs piped up, in voices farther from the microphones, a chorus from the back of the encounter suit, “Time! Time to consider! Time!”
Bria huffed, and without reply, dropped off the edge of the cliff. Ki’Ki’Tilish lifted two legs high in alarm, leaning back. Only Tarkos and Eydis had walked the cliff edge and knew that Bria had dropped down onto the second step of the descending path.
“Come,” Tarkos said, after their cries of surprise passed. “There is a stair.”
The Kirt made clacking noises, and dispiritedly dragged its legs towards the cliff edge. The OnUnAn and Tiklik followed, their engines whining softly. Tarkos watched to be sure the ship door folded closed, and then he told the cruiser to enter stealth mode. It shimmered and disappeared, emulating the low green forest of tough, wind-resistant plants behind it.
Ki’Ki’Tilish held one leg out over the cliff, as if seeking a step in the air. “This one goes down,” she said, mandibles drooping behind her clear visor, “to die in the shell-cracking waves.”
CHAPTER 7
“I think we are right above the entrance,” Tarkos said, leaning carefully forward to look over the cliff edge. Tiklik did not reply.
Tarkos searched the moss-covered ground till he found the nearest patch of exposed stone: some kind of ancient weather-smoothed igneous rock. He hammered a piton into the stone, using tools from a small climbing kit he had taken from the cruiser. Then he linked the sheathed monomolecular filament from his armor’s grapple to the piton. He hung the climbing kit from his hip, and touched the small box that Pietro Danielle had given him, to be sure it sat securely on his other hip.
When he stood, he found Tiklik leaning far back, three of its legs held high into the air and spread far apart. Tarkos stared at the strange sight, which might have seemed ominous but that the robot faced away from him, towards the sea and the giant blue planet that filled the sky.
For long moments the robot did not move. Tarkos wondered if it had fallen back into slow time. “What are you doing?” he finally asked.
“I listen to the gas giant, Dâk-Kir.”
Tarkos frowned. This didn’t seem the best time for radio astronomy. But then, in a flash, a thought hit him. He furrowed his brow. “You miss space, don’t you?”
“My functions are unrealized,” the rob
ot said, “when I am bound within ships or low in a gravity disturbance.”
Tarkos had accepted that AIs were persons. This AI before him had secondary citizenship in the Galactic Alliance, and most of the rights that came with that. But when he looked at an AI—inevitably housed in some smooth metal shell—his imagination always failed. He could imagine what the life of a Kirt or Neelee or Bright or even a OnUnAn might be like, and sympathize with its hopes and pains. But he could picture only cold calculation occurring inside an AI.
And yet, something in the robot’s demeanor pulled now at his empathy. This robot had drifted and dreamed for centuries between the stars. Even a planet would seem a tiny holding pen for such a creature, and being within a ship must seem like being fettered. Could the robot’s strange behavior, its awkward comments—“there is a volume of space 14 billion lights years in diameter outside this ship”—be words of longing, conveying its struggle to find the familiar in this alien life?
Tarkos looked up at the blue giant that filled the sky. “What does it sound like?”
“I will slow and convert the radio signal to an audio signal in human hearing range,” Tiklik said. In a moment the robot transmitted to Tarkos’s suit the sound of Dâk-Kir. A low, long moan filled his helmet. It pulsed with a sorrow like whale song. A second note sounded above the moan, a whistle high and tenuous, tittering the urgent spin of the magnetic core, deep in its unfathomable atmosphere. Tarkos held his breath a moment and listened.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. And, for a moment, Tarkos felt himself slowing down, settling into a prolonged pace, as they both listened to the sad and ancient song of the gas giant, the host to the Well of Furies, mother of world destroyers.
_____
After Bria leapt down a dozen of the huge steps, she reared up to watch the progress of Ki’Ki’Tilish and Gowgoroup and Pala Eydis.
It was a difficult descent. Eydis started by jumping off each step, but finally that became tiring, and she sat on the edge of each before she slipped down to the next. The OnUnAn’s encounter vehicle moved slowly, ponderously forward, the servos whining as one leg stretched down, planted itself on the stone, before the next leg moved, methodical but untiring. The quadrupedal motion was so uneven that each step threatened to topple the box where Gowgoroup gathered. And, pulling up the rear, Ki’Ki’Tilish had the most difficult time, splaying her thin legs in every direction, trying to find a hold as she tentatively reached down toward the next flat, before—it seemed to Bria—she collapsed off the step, folding her legs painfully each time as she landed on the step below.
“This one will be crippled when we arrive,” the Kirt complained. Bria was inclined to believe her.
When they caught up with Bria, and she felt confident they could proceed, she hurried ahead, to the end of the steps. There, she inspected the narrow shelf of stone that hugged the cliff. No Kriani were visible, and no vessel floated on the dark sea. Waves smashed on the sharp rocks before her and spit up tall crests of exploding white foam. When Eydis finally made it to Bria’s side, the Sussurat’s gray armor shimmered with a sheen of clinging salt water.
Bria said nothing, but turned and led the way forward. They walked over the sharp stones, to a large cleft in the cliff. Into this, the stone walkway rose toward a cave-like entrance, where the huge door of black metal stood in the natural recess.
Eydis looked over her shoulder at the sea. The black clouds swallowed all the sky now. The stars and the gas giant were gone, covered by the storm. Waves hammered at the stones, throwing up ever higher geysers that collapsed noisily. The sea foam rolled forward, till it bubbled around their feet.
“This is not good,” Eydis said. “The door is closed and sealed. It should still be open.” Another wave sent water slapping against the steps to the door. She looked down at her wet boots. “Not much time.”
“Then hurry,” Bria said. She walked forward and glared at the controls mounted beside the door.
“Right,” Eydis said, pushing past her. “A Sussurat knows her duty. We should get going. But this door lacks any smarts. No remote capabilities.” She pressed her hand to the control panel. It set aglow, and symbols precipitated on the screen. “So we need the old fashioned approach. We need someone inside to let us in.”
Eydis poked at virtual controls in a language that Bria did not recognize. Finally, Eydis lifted her oxygen mask from her face for a moment to call out, “Librarian? Are you there? We ask to be let in. It is Pala Eydis, Galactic Citizen, and with me are two other Galactic Citizens, and one member of the OnUnAn alliance.”
A hiss sounded from speakers above the door, followed by a booming voice, loud enough to be heard over the surf. It sounded strangely like several voices, or like a tight echo of one voice. “Suddenly afterneath! Rising: the past not passed but pressing present. We wandering otherworldlings, time-toiling, Galactic gatherers, need heed the horror!”
Bria sighed. “Thrumpit,” she growled. “Verbose species. Too creative.”
“Ruinreader, is that you?” Eydis called. She turned to Bria. “You’re right. Amazing ears, to tell that by the sound alone. This Thrumpit is another archeologist, like myself.”
“Thrumpit in Alliance,” Bria said.
Eydis nodded. “Right you are. Ruinreader is a citizen of the Galactic Alliance. It is a primary citizen, in fact, though few Thrumpits are.”
Bria reared up on her hind legs and howled, “Commander Briaathursiasaliantiormethessess of Harmonizers calls to first citizen Ruinreader! Open door!”
For a moment, nothing happened. The shadows around the door grew darker, as the clouds above thickened in a gust of wind that buffeted them, making Eydis stumble. Spray blew over Bria’s visor, and the salt drops slid quickly down the ultra-low-friction glass.
Then with a groan of vast engines, followed by the deep screech of protesting metal, the door cracked open, leaking light. In the glow, a barrel-shaped figure wavered, leaning from side to side with uncertainty. The Thrumpits were one of only two radially symmetric intelligent beings known of the oxygen order, and rare off their homeworld. The creature was almost Eydis’s height, with a pink barrel of a body that had three sides marked out by a kind of black seam between them. Each side had a single eye above a mouth, and below each of these a long forking tentacle.
The door ground farther open. Ki’Ki’Tilish and Gowgoroup stepped forward. Light from within washed over the group, making the sea spray glow around them like a fog. They cast long thin shadows over the rising water at their feet. The Thrumpit shuffled closer. Then it twisted, turning each eye in turn on Bria and Eydis.
“Hear us, Harmonizer,” its three mouths said in chorus. “Hear! They return! Proud parasite kings, crowned in black chitin. From ancient spaces, not extinct but now excoriating, those world-wreckers, forest fellers. They will drive us across the stars and sup on our secrets. They will crack our soul codes under their claws. Clade rapers, leaving weeping worlds in their hatewake!”
“A singleton with many voices—ridiculous,” Gowgoroup transmitted, in an impatient, choking gurgle. “What? What what?” its parts echoed. “What does it say?”
But Bria seemed to understand the Thrumpit’s poetry. “Ulltrians landed?” she growled.
“Yes!” the Thrumpit shouted. “They raided ancient artifacts, seizing long lost war weapons, engines of entropy. And by thousands they captured Kriani, crushing crowds onto black ships.”
“Wait a minute,” Pala Eydis said. She pushed past two of Ki’Ki’Tilish’s spidery legs, and put her hand flat on Bria’s armored chest. “Wait one minute, Predator.” She pushed so hard that Bria even felt the shove, through the thick layers of her armor. “Wait. One. Minute. Ruinreader’s saying—you’re saying—there were Ulltrians here. Ulltrians? Live Ulltrians? Now?”
“I am already dead,” Ki’Ki’Tilish clicked quietly. “This is now certain.”
The Thrumpit shuffled forward toward Eydis, partly rotating on its tripod feet. Once by her side, it wrappe
d a tentacle around her arm but said nothing.
Eydis glared at Bria. “You should have told me. You should have told me. What am I saying? You should tell the whole godforsaken galaxy.”
“When?” Bria asked the Thrumpit, ignoring Eydis.
The Thrumpit turned slightly, and fixed Bria with one of its three huge eyes. “Sussurat, hear: with darkling dawn, their cold ship sat atop the Forest Tombs, freezing the worldskin air into hoary crust. Cracking clouds they left then. Whether all went or whether other sinister ships while still, this horror-haunted citizen cannot say.”
“Where are Forest Tombs?” Bria asked.
“Ten ten of ten standard units from the cliff crown,” the Thrumpit answered.
Bria sat back on her haunches. She spread her armored claws. “Ulltrians likely left Well of Furies,” she said. “Cruiser would detect active Ulltrian ships. No signature of gravdrives, no signature of probability drives, in system. Are not ours to fight now.”
“They aren’t ours to fight ever,” Eydis said. “If there’re Ulltrians, even just a few, we need an army. We need two armies. Not two Predators.”
Bria sniffed in defiance, her breath fogging for a second on the inside of her clear visor. “Will see what two Predators do,” she told Eydis.
A huge wave crashed on the stones behind them. The water washed across the flat stones, over their feet, and through the open door. Bria growled, a low rumble barely audible over the radio, before adding, “Tides come.” She stood and pointed at the hall that rose behind the Thrumpit. “Gather records now.”
Pala Eydis frowned at Bria, but after a hesitant pause she turned to the Thrumpit. “Ruinreader, the Harmonizers need a book. One of the ancient books.” She made a sound like coughing, choking on a series of hard consonants. Bria leaned forward in interest: these two archeologists both knew the shunned language of the Ulltrians.
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