Still glowing. Should he try to activate a different menu? There was plenty of unlit writing to choose from, but what did it mean? He licked the salt-crusted roughness of his chapped lips. What else might the device do? Would he accidentally trigger a booby trap, or collapse the region of confinement, or launch some new and sinister behavior?
Get a grip, he thought wryly. You have a nasty surprise and you start seeing a bogeyman behind every rock. What kind of alien culture would build an artifact like this, out in the middle of nowhere, just to torture or trap the unwary visitor?
He rose onto one knee to study the script with renewed attention, arm braced against a clear patch of metal on the column for support. The lit section was a block three lines wide and as tall as his hand, bracketed on either side by glassy chrome and then more script in similar-sized pieces. Taken together, the lines and gaps formed a sparse band that completely girdled the curving column at waist height. Above the blinking cursor there was a gap, and then a new series of glyphs began. These were smaller, scribed more densely, and the spans of empty chrome between the line groupings looked thinner and more scarce. If the device wanted a selection of sorts, and worked like all menus Rafa had ever seen—from general to specific—then perhaps the upper band enumerated possibilities suggested below.
That line of reasoning immediately sparked a hundred doubts and criticisms. Who could say how an alien mind might work? What valid conclusions could he possibly draw, inferring purely from human premises?
Yet what other assumptions could he make? He didn’t have the luxury of a leisurely, objective analysis. He had to get out of this cage and make it down the coast if he wanted to stay alive. He needed food. He needed water in the worst way. He needed an earthside doctor to talk Chen through some serious intervention with his ankle. Or an amputation, maybe. How long did it take for gangrene to set in? He looked longingly at the sky. It had begun to cloud over half-heartedly; if rain fell, would it penetrate the force field?
His finger rose from the blinking vertical line and hovered uncertainly over the runs of text above. Some were quite long and lasted several lines, while others were as short as four or five glyphs. Presumably each was a separate item of sorts. Did it make any difference which he chose?
Nothing matters anymore, came the unbidden thought. Less or more traveled, all roads dead-end just over the horizon. But he shook his head angrily. ¡Todavía no! He still had a few fierce tears left.
A short stream of symbols, the first and briefest above the cursor, immediately reddened under his touch and began to luminesce. The alien voice uttered a few syllables. Along the innermost surface of the pillar, a brilliant scarlet bolt rose smoothly, flashed behind his trembling fingertips, arced against the silver overhead, and curved back down to the opposing base. Under his knees, grains of sand began to vibrate slightly. A thin line of crimson raced in a ring bounded by the legs of the arch, where the invisible boundaries of his cage met the rock underfoot. The air quivered with a low, resonant hum.
Flicker.
The azure of the sky abruptly deepened. The pounding surf stuttered and then resumed, much subdued. A gushing breeze rolled off his shoulders and blew across the rock; Rafa felt his ears pop slightly. The glare of the sun gave way to late afternoon shadow, and the temperature dropped. The glowing symbols near his fingertips shifted, morphed. The red faded and went out.
44
The low primes took their time pondering 1291’s proposal. They were ripe in years; nearly two hundred cycles of dryness and monsoon had elapsed since the oldest had descended from the nethers of the stratosphere, barely more than spores, and broadcast a squeaky salutation to acquire a skyfriend family and designation.
They’d seen the pod ebb and flow under the complex dynamics of weather, disease, and competition. They’d risen with long-time friends—including many of their own hatchings—keening as their tissues, thin and swollen with age, surrendered to the final, runaway gushes of hydrogen and burst apart.
1291 waited for their decision, reigning in her curiosity and her restlessness as best she could.
That her idea hadn’t been dismissed out of hand was encouraging. But the low primes had not deviated from the longitudinal magnetic band they were following. They’d stubbornly ignored the juvenile gossip about a strange speaking earthbound, even when it was corroborated by scattered reports from other pods. And though they’d allowed 1291 her brief forays from the fold, they’d nagged her back again. With the start of the stormy season, their patience was thin, and they longed to get beyond the mountains where the turbulence was weaker.
Now the earthbound had somehow shot hours ahead of them, and its mad chittering had caught the attention of most of the younger generation. How could an earthbound learn to speak? Why would one suddenly start a frantic conversation in which it was the only participant? What was it saying?
After lengthy deliberations, 2 and 3 signaled a decision. They repolarized and began to slip sideways, out of the magnetic current. 1291 immediately sank from her detached lookout a kilometer overhead. The rest of the pod converged as well, respectfully quiet, but alight with curiosity and excitement.
We’re much closer to the talker than we were before, began 2 without preamble. And since so many of you wonder about it, we’ll go in for a closer look.
1291 lit up with delight. The whole pod?
Certainly not. The weather’s looking nasty, and we don’t want any of the young calves near the ground.
This was an obvious consideration that 1291 had overlooked. She remained silent and embarrassed as 2 continued.
1291, we have heard you rebroadcasting its speech.
A few times. That is true.
Why did you do that?
I thought it might be trying to call the siren in The Cold.
But the siren can’t speak. It just wails for no reason.
Sometimes the siren seems to exchange signals with the speaking earthbound and its companions. There’s a give and take like a conversation.
The siren only makes noise, interjected 5. It’s not proper language. So what could the speaker be saying to it?
Maybe it wants the siren to join its pod.
But the speaking earthbound doesn’t have a pod. It’s all by itself, isn’t it?
1291 gave the radio equivalent of a shrug. Sometimes there are other earthbounds nearby, but they only squeak or remain silent. I don’t know. Maybe the earthbound is hurt, and wants the siren to help.
1291 perceived a yellow blush of amusement from 3, cherry surprise on 2 and 5. No doubt they considered this a strange line of reasoning. After all, the siren seemed incapable of any motion or intelligence, and nothing but flaming streaks ever descended from The Cold. But she refused to apologize; nobody had a better explanation.
2 apparently felt no need to respond to this comment; he began designating members of the scouting party with only a faint tone of humor in his voice. It was a larger group than 1291 had expected; besides a couple dozen of the more boisterous juveniles, 97 and 293 were coming as supervisory adults.
When he was done, he launched into a lecture about responsibility and caution and the need to get back to the pod in a timely fashion. 1291 acknowledged the counsel meekly, along with the rest of the group. Then, as the primes began to repolarize and get underway again, 1291 sank toward the pounding wash of surf a kilometer down and a dozen ahead, trailing a stately retinue of escorts.
45
Rafa let out his breath in a rush. He still knelt beneath a metallic gateway, but the lonely promontory and its jungle backdrop had vanished.
He seemed to be in an abandoned plaza of sorts. Beyond the circle underfoot, the ground consisted of smooth but discolored stone, broken at regular intervals by thrusting patches of wildflowers and the swollen, rough-scaled trunks and man-sized fronds of enormous cycads. Ringing the area were other arches of the same size and shape as his own, arranged like spokes of a wheel. At the hub stood a spike of smooth stone perhaps a
hundred paces wide—a tower that rose gracefully skyward to breathtaking heights. It appeared to grow organically out of the ground, with a rounded flange at the base and no noticeable seams or joints, though a grid of reflected sunlight attested glassy window-work higher up. The poorly disciplined patches of vegetation and the pervasive green mottle of lichen on rock suggested age and disuse, but the profiles of arches and tower were hale and unbroken.
The constructed ring appeared to sit on a terrace that had been sculpted, as with the blade of a master carver, from a background stutter of cliff and ledge that rimmed about a third of the circumference and threw a swath of the arches into shadow. Opposite the shadow, the terrace fell away toward subdued sounds of the sea.
All these impressions accumulated in a few short seconds, as Rafa’s nonplussed senses recalibrated. And as the tide of perception rushed in, it brought an eddy of unanswered questions. What had happened? Clearly he was elsewhere, but how, and why, and how far from where he’d been a moment ago? Was he even on the same planet?
Practical considerations first. He crawled painfully away from the arch, every moment fearing a restraining pressure at his head and shoulders. But the field was gone, and in a moment he was resting under an umbrella of cycad frond, wincing and panting, the pineapple-like texture of its trunk pricking his shoulders through thick layers of biosuit.
He tapped his wrist display. According to the compass, the ocean beyond the near edge of the shelf lay due south. That meant shadows were running east, as they had when he climbed out of the water.
He consulted the GPS and shivered with relief. Never had a little red dot seemed more welcome on a map. The triangulating signal of the satellites placed him about ninety kilometers farther down the coast, far beyond the spot where he’d calculated for the viking crew. But it was the same coast, the same ocean, the same world he’d been snatched from a hundred heartbeats ago.
At least there was that.
A perverse urge to self-pity crowded up along with his relief, and for a moment he was tempted to give in to anger at the capricious fate that had doubled the journey he was facing. Could he survive long enough for the backtrack? But he dismissed the emotion, as he had so many times before.
Gracias, Padre, he prayed with silent intensity. ¡Ayúdame otra vez!
After a moment he opened his eyes again to study the deepening indigo overhead. Regret touched the pale crowsfeet at the edges of his eyes, but his mouth and lips remained motionless. No rain tonight. Not here, anyway.
Maybe he should try to go back through the arch. It would shorten his journey, and the cloud cover had been more promising where he came from. But the idea died aborning. He had no confidence that he could manipulate the raised ideographs correctly, even assuming they were functional on this end, and it was pure folly to run more risks in his weakened and injured state. He had no taste for a force field prison or a jaunt to the other end of the planet.
His eyes ran over his scuffed, sand-crusted boots and came to rest on a bulging pocket at his thigh. The white berries he’d cut last night were still there, no doubt crushed by the steady action of pumping legs in the water and the bruising climb to the arch. His stomach twisted with hunger. Did he dare eat them? He’d gone without food for several days now, and it might take another week to work his way back to safer rations. A healthy man at rest could hold out far longer than that—but could he? As a marathoner he’d eaten as much as five or six thousand calories a day, just to keep energy up and hunger at bay. His pace was no less punishing now, and he was seriously injured. The boil had gone down, but who knew what sickness or infection the beetle bite would yet bring? He needed all the strength he could get.
But he didn’t need to poison himself, either.
He unzipped the pouch, scooped its contents into his brown palms, and sniffed experimentally. The mangled berries oozed a green gel that smelled sweet, citrusy, and unbelievably inviting.
Rafa stuffed them back and wiped his palms on the rock, then on his trousers. If it came down to sickness or starvation, he’d choose the former. But for now he wouldn’t take the risk.
To take his mind off the lingering smell, Rafa got back on his knees and went exploring. If he was going to reverse the unexpected jag in his travels, he had to get back down to the water, and that meant finding a way off the terrace.
He was near the northwest rim of the ledge, only a stone’s throw from the beginning of shadows cast by the collaring cliffs. He crawled farther south, into the reddening light, straight for the nearest access to the edge. The surf grew louder.
He stopped near a shoulder-high post a meter from the edge, swaying with weariness and vertigo. It appeared to be made of the same silvery metal as the arches, and it had begun to glow around the top. He stretched out a hand, frowned at the sudden resistance. Glancing along the perimeter, he saw other posts, spaced about every twenty or thirty meters.
A guard wall.
Not a bad idea. Rising to his knees, he looked down at plunging, jagged spines of rock and pounding spumes of aquamarine and white. Gusts of sea air whipped at his lashes and ears. Despite the height—nearly two hundred meters, he estimated—he could feel the spray and sense the stentorian thunder at the breakwater. Not a climb for the faint-hearted, even if he could somehow scale the barrier. In fact, not a climb for anyone who valued their life.
He squinted east, along the edge of the face, looking for gaps in the spacing of posts. Surely the builders of this lonely perch had left themselves a way off.
That thought was followed hard on its heels by visions of the arches. Maybe they didn’t need to get down the hard way at all... But he wasn’t about to risk another encounter there until he’d thoroughly checked for good old-fashioned stairs or a natural incline amenable to descent.
Deep in the shadows along the far eastern rim, he thought he saw doubled posts. Could there be a gate? He cut across the plaza, detouring around a cycad, feeling the beginnings of wear as his knees scraped the rock. The sky was streaming orange and gold with sunset now, the bronze sickle of rings slanting behind a cloud bank along the southern horizon.
By the time he completed the traversal, his arms were weak from crawling, and the ambient light was noticeably attenuated. But it did look like a gate of sorts, and beyond it Rafa glimpsed broad, convex steps like a series of overlapping dinner plates, carved deeply into the rock. He rose unsteadily on his knees at the near gatepost, running his eyes along their trajectory through a rib of cliff to the point where they emerged on the other side.
And gasped.
At the foot of the cliffs the steps broadened out to a fan-shaped dais that overlooked a crescent bay of beach and forest. It was difficult to identify details through headache blur and the dim wake of sunset, but the profusion of elegant curves and sweeping shadows bore clear evidence of hundreds of buildings. And one cluster of structures, smaller and nearer the shore than all the others, was glowing with half a dozen points of light.
While he watched, mouth open, one of the lights dimmed and then rebrightened as a dark shape temporarily obscured it.
There was someone—some thing—alive down there!
He was slinking reflexively back from the gate when one of the bulky structures in the cluster coughed to life and began to hum. It sounded exactly like... A skimmer!
Puzzlement mixed with relief flashed through his brain, but instantly it was crowded out by an unreasoning panic. Had he chanced on the crew in a fleeting visit? Were they powering up the skimmer to return to a distant base? He couldn’t stand the thought of coming so close, only to be forsaken once again.
He plunged through the gate, too intent to be surprised at the lack of a restraining force field, and began to scurry and flop awkwardly down the steps, yelling hoarsely, his knees bruising on the hard outlines of steps. He’d never make it. The stairway stretched away to infinity below, and he imagined the hum of the skimmer had gone up a notch. They couldn’t possibly hear him over the sound of crashing w
aves and the powering up of the flying machine, but his throat quivered in harsh strain for decibels anyway.
“Up here! Hey!”
Another light flickered below. Someone headed for the cockpit.
Rafa stopped crawling and fumbled weakly with the zipper on his suit. He ripped, tore with desperate fingers, then pealed the sweaty upper half off, heedless of the scalding pressure at his ribs. He lurched onto one knee and raised the garment overhead like a banner.
Look, someone. Please look. His arms felt like they were weighted with lead. Every flailing gyration drained his strength. His vision blurred, doubled, cleared, blurred again. With the last of his strength, he hurled the heavy fabric outward, away from the steps and over the steep jumble of stone, across the span of water toward the beach below. Then he pitched forward, bare chest and face slapping the warm slab underfoot, and knew no more.
46
Eccles emerged from the final security checkpoint and rubbed the stubble on his chin with a yawn. The sequestering was starting to wear on everyone; he was glad they had only a few more days before the claim was finalized and they could go public.
Nobody remarked on his tardy return; the scientists were cocooned in electronics, totally immersed in their own worlds of discovery. Besides, regular schedules had evaporated of late. He’d slept on a cot in the break room again, after working half the night on a phantom bug that turned out to be user error. That was par for the course. Whenever anybody had an emergency, he was in the hot seat, whether it was Bezovnik or the scientists.
They were all arrogant and impatient. Sometimes it made him pity the vikings.
A message was blinking away on the screen in his cubicle. “Piggyback detected.” He read it twice before it made any sense. Then he swore and dropped heavily into his chair. His fingers flew over the keyboard.
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