Penumbra

by Eric Brown

  Klien had killed Quineau then - his very first killing - for the good of Quineau himself, for the good of humankind. It was God’s will, he knew. He had shot Quineau in the head, and the traitor died instantly, without protest and, one could say, almost peacefully. Then Klien had knelt over the body and, like a priest bestowing benediction, traced the shape of a cross on the side of Quineau’s face not blackened beyond recognition.

  He had left Madrigal, and three days later arrived on Earth.

  It seemed such a long, long time ago. He smiled as he recalled his assumption, when he stepped off the shuttle at Calcutta spaceport, that his mission was drawing to an end. If only he had known that it was only just the beginning.

  He glanced at his watch. It was almost two - time for his appointment with Raja Khan. He paid his bill, left the restaurant and made his way to an underground bar a hundred metres along the street. In the lavatory he pulled the capillary net from his jacket and slipped it over his head. He looked in the mirror. A thin-faced, silver-haired man stared back at him.

  He returned to the bar, ordered a beer and carried it to a private booth at the far end of the low-lighted room. Five minutes later Raja Khan entered, a giant of a man in a voluminous shalwar kameez, who had to stoop to allow his full head of oiled black hair safe passage through the doorway.

  Klien lifted his glass in a salute, and Khan joined him.

  ‘Have you decided yet?’ Khan asked.

  Klien had to control his reactions. He felt nothing but revulsion towards this man. He had read his file, his extensive criminal record. He would have taken great delight in eliminating him right now. But he had to be careful.

  ‘Have you decided?’ Khan asked again, greed evident in his insistence.

  Klien looked away from the Indian, finding the oversized features of his face gross and displeasing. Two young women were leaving the bar, and Khan mistook Klien’s gaze.

  Khan reached across the table and tapped the back of Klien’s hand. ‘You like, hey? If you like, I can supply, ah-cha? Or perhaps you prefer boys?’

  Klien realised, then, that he had decided. Raja Khan had just signed his own death warrant.

  For the next hour they discussed the details of the transaction.

  ‘We need to meet again,’ Klien said. ‘I must show you where the gold is to be delivered.’

  Khan gestured. ‘Ah-cha. Fine. You tell me a place, a time.’ Klien smiled to himself. Very soon, he knew, the world would be a fractionally better place for honest citizens.

  * * * *

  13

  Bennett touched Mackendrick’s arm and indicated the view through the transporter’s side window. ‘Another line of markers.’

  They passed down an avenue laid with the arrow-like stones to either hand, as if to guide visitors towards the ruin. It had appeared massive enough from a distance; only as they drew into the valley did its true size become apparent. It receded in perspective, a series of tall columns and ornately carved cross-pieces.

  When the transporter came to a halt, Bennett climbed from the cab and walked into the shadows of the ruin. Mackendrick followed with a shoulder-mounted camera. Ten Lee came last, even her usually immobile features registering something at her awe.

  Bennett gestured to Mackendrick. ‘How come this wasn’t picked up on the satellite shots?’

  ‘There was only one probe, remember, Josh? It made a single orbit and a lot of the planet was obscured by storms. It was a miracle it picked up what it did.’

  Bennett nodded and moved off by himself, walking further into the valley between the columns. There was something about the scale of the ruin that demanded quiet and solitary contemplation. Each fluted column was perhaps a hundred metres high and five broad. Time and the storms had brought a number of columns and cross-pieces tumbling down. Their remains lay on the floor of the valley, claimed and covered by the pervasive purple grass. Bennett scrambled across the overgrown mounds, staring ahead at the columns marching off into the valley.

  Ten Lee called from behind him. ‘Over here!’

  He jumped down and joined her. She was examining a carving at the foot of a column. It showed circles within circles, a concentric series of symbols and hieroglyphs.

  Ten Lee was shaking her head. ‘It’s a mandala, Joshua. Look, these are the nine spheres of existence. In here, this garden at the centre, this is the symbolic representation of Nirvana. It is very much like the mandalas of the Mahayana school.’ She fell silent, her small fingers tracing the weather-worn grooves.

  Mackendrick lowered his camera. ‘Must be a coincidence, Ten. Humans can’t have built this. It’s made from the same stone as the markers out there. At a rough guess I’d say it’s at least ten thousand years old.’

  ‘Humans had nothing to do with this,’ Ten Lee said. ‘The truth must be even more amazing.’

  Bennett looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you see? If aliens built this, then they too must have followed a philosophy similar to Buddhism. Do you understand the implications of this? It means that a second race has developed the same philosophy, arrived at the same universal truth.’

  ‘If,’ Bennett pointed out, ‘this is indeed a mandala; if it meant the same to the aliens as it does to us.’

  Ten Lee nodded. ‘Of course. We must be cautious in ascribing motives and methods.’

  They split up. Bennett resumed his walk along the boulevard of columns. Tenebrae was setting, lending a soft opalescent light to the ruinous scene. He noticed movement at the top of a column and froze with involuntary surprise. He relaxed - one of the great birds they had seen earlier, the pteranodon equivalent, was roosting in a messy nest, stretching its awkward sickle wings and cawing from time to time.

  Bennett checked the foot of each column, looking for mandalas or other carvings. He came across one or two similar designs, and many more carvings similar to those on the markers on the plain: square tablets covered with the familiar hieroglyphs. He looked back the way he had come. The others were tiny figures lost in the perspective of the receding columns. He should, he knew, be feeling wonder now, a sense of the awe of discovery, and while he did feel something of the intellectual frisson at the consequence of this find, another part of him recalled what he had thought earlier: that no matter what they discovered, it would be an anti-climax. He, the observer, would still be aware of the fact that, at base, he was still himself, flawed and weak and full of self-doubt and worse.

  So five minutes later, when he came across the first of the statues, he was thinking of Julia and Ella and still experiencing a residuum of pain, and at the same time he was staring up at the carved image of a being that was not quite humanoid, yet not quite insectoid, but something of an eerie amalgam of the two. There were other statues positioned between the columns, a whole series of them receding further into the valley.

  It was a good thirty seconds before he remembered himself and called out. ‘Ten, Mack! Over here!’ Even then he could not stop himself thinking how Ella would have loved hearing about this.

  Mackendrick and Ten arrived by his side, breathless. They stared up at the figures, each one perhaps three metres tall. Mackendrick swore to himself and Ten murmured something in her own language.

  The statue was carved from white stone, and showed a bipedal, thin-legged creature, bent of knee, with a long torso consisting of too many ribs. Its head was attenuated with something of a horse about it, and at the same time a locust, its eyes large and staring. On the plinth beneath its feet was a series of hieroglyphs, as if the being depicted was a famous alien and this was some form of commemoration.

  ‘Do you think they’re life-sized?’ Bennett said.

  Mackendrick squinted up at the statue. He shook his head. ‘In this gravity, and as thin as they are? No way, Josh. I’d guess that they’d be not much taller than us.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Ten Lee added, ‘if they still exist.’

  Bennett stared into the face of the statue. He was on a Rim p
lanet two thousand light years from home, had just discovered incontrovertible evidence of alien life on Penumbra, and the fact was still to hit him. He wished he could forget himself and feel the sense of wonder Mack and Ten Lee were obviously enjoying.

  ‘We’re just an hour away from the settlement,’ Mackendrick was saying. ‘There’s a couple of hours of daylight left. Should we press on to the settlement, or stay here the night?’

  Ten Lee said, ‘I would like to investigate the settlement, see what is there.’

  ‘Me too,’ Bennett said. ‘Let’s move on.’

  They left the statues and made their way back down the avenue of columns to the transporter. Mackendrick drove from the valley and turned to the north, accelerating along the plain of purple grass.

  They made the journey in silence, each unwilling to break the mood of expectation - and not a little apprehension - that had settled over them. Bennett considered what lay ahead, if indeed the settlement was a settlement and was inhabited. Would a confrontation with an actual living alien, not just a frozen statue, shake him from his apathy?

  ‘We’ve been lucky,’ Mackendrick said at last, breaking the tension. ‘We haven’t been caught in a storm today.’

  ‘And it was fine during the night,’ Ten Lee said.

  It was as if they had to fill the silence with small talk in a bid to shut out what lay ahead.

  ‘We’ll probably experience the storm of all storms tonight,’ Bennett added.

  An uneasy silence followed. The transporter bucketed along at speed, as if it too was impatient to reach the settlement. Tenebrae descended with immense ease towards the mountains in the east. Overhead, in the rarefied dark blue of night, the minor sun beamed weakly among the scatter of distant stars.

  ‘I was wondering . . .’ Mackendrick began. ‘When we get to the settlement, do we go in armed?’ He glanced from Ten Lee to Bennett.

  ‘If they’re Buddhists,’ Ten Lee replied, ‘they’ll be a peaceable people.’

  ‘And if they’re not Buddhists,’ Bennett pointed out, ‘and that mandala of yours was the symbol of a warring clan, they might butcher us first and ask questions later.’

  Ten Lee gave him an unreadable look. He sensed her disdain.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ten, but I don’t think we should assume too much from symbols that just happen to look like something we know and understand from Earth.’

  ‘Why don’t we wait until we get there,’ Ten Lee compromised, if you wish, I will go in first, alone.’

  Mackendrick nodded. ‘We’ll assess the situation when we arrive - but there’s no going in alone. We’re in this together.’

  The plain rose before them and the transporter laboured up the incline. At the crest, Mackendrick slowed and then cut the engine. They stared through the windshield at the revealed panorama.

  The land fell away towards a narrowing of the two mountain ranges, and situated in a dipping saddle of land were the structures the probe had filmed on its fly-by. There were perhaps thirty constructions, small square cabins built of timber, in two orderly lines in the centre of the valley. To one side, overlooking the settlement, was a peculiar rise in the plain, an irregular hump like a low earthwork or tumulus.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone at home,’ Bennett said. ‘Unless they retire early.’

  ‘We’ll go in with the transporter,’ Mackendrick said. ‘As a precaution, keep your rifles at the ready.’

  Bennett raised his pulser as Mackendrick powered up the transporter. They moved slowly down the incline, passing the earthwork and approaching the first of the cabins at a crawl. Mackendrick cut the engine and, in the sudden silence, they sat without a word and stared down at the settlement of crudely built huts.

  It occurred to Bennett that the aliens, if they were also responsible for the settlement, had certainly devolved from the mighty race which had constructed the columned temple or museum.

  ‘Okay,’ Mackendrick said in a hushed voice. ‘We’ll get out and walk in together.’

  Bennett jumped from the cab and clutched his rifle, apprehension creating a tightness in his chest. With Ten Lee and Mackendrick he walked slowly towards the first timber cabin. It appeared, he thought, little different from a crude shack in backwoods Oregon.

  The first cabin was clearly derelict. The door hung on one hinge, and likewise the shutters on the glassless window. Purple grass and a form of bind-weed had climbed the outer walls. Bennett kicked open the hanging door and peered into the dim interior. The little light cast by the setting gas giant revealed bare boards and a broken chair; the sound of scurrying suggested that the cabin’s only occupants were small animals.

  Bennett backed out, shaking his head. ‘No one at home, Mack.’

  They moved to the next cabin in line, identical in design to the first and, it seemed, all the others. This one was empty even of broken furniture. They conferred outside the door.

  ‘How long do you think they’ve been deserted?’ Mackendrick asked. ‘Fifteen, twenty years?’

  ‘Or fifty, a hundred?’ Bennett added. ‘Much of the timber’s rotting, but we’re on an alien world. How long does wood take to rot on Penumbra? It’s hard to tell how long they’ve been empty.’

  ‘Do you think the same beings built the columned structure and these shacks?’ Ten Lee asked.

  ‘If the ruins are at least ten thousand years old,’ Bennett said, ‘a race can go a long way downhill in that time. They entered a dark age, lost their collective ability to design great architecture - or their need to build it - and resorted to these.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mackendrick said. ‘Let’s split up and search each cabin. If you find anything, shout.’

  Bennett moved to the third shack, ducking past what remained of the door. He looked around the single room. The skeleton of a bunk bed occupied one corner. There was no sign of personal effects or possessions of any kind, no tools or utensils that might have been left behind when their erstwhile owners moved on.

  He walked from cabin to cabin along the row, finding much the same in each: the odd scrap of broken furniture, or nothing at all. In the last cabin he recognised the shape of an infant’s cot, made from the same timber as was used on the huts, rotted through and lying on its side. It spoke to him more eloquently of a lost race than had the statues in the ruin, carved with care and skill for posterity. He considered the similarities in such diverse races. He had travelled thousands of light years to the Rim, and here was something constructed for an alien infant, recognisably a cot.

  He was stepping from the cabin, about to find Mackendrick and suggest they pitch camp for the night, when Ten Lee’s muffled voice sounded from the second row of cabins. He walked around the shack and looked up and down the length of what once might have been the main street. Ten Lee was a tiny figure standing outside the last cabin in the row, waving frantically.

  ‘Joshua! In here!’

  Mackendrick appeared from a nearby hut and hurried over to Ten Lee. She was leaning against the jamb of the door, wearing an expression of shock.

  ‘Ten?’ Bennett took her shoulder. ‘Ten, are you okay?’

  She shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘What is it?’ Mackendrick snapped.

  She indicated over her shoulder. ‘In there. On the far wall. I don’t think I was seeing things . . .’

  Bennett hurried into the shack, Mackendrick behind him. The last light of Tenebrae sent a pale searchlight through the window and illuminated a square patch on the wall, and in the illuminated square was a picture, an old pix crudely framed with four lengths of the ubiquitous timber.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Mackendrick whispered.

  Bennett reached out, lifted the pix from the wall and carried it outside so that the brighter light might confirm what he was seeing. He sat on the step, Ten Lee and Mackendrick beside him. He understood, now, Ten’s strange reaction. He was experiencing it himself. The pix showed a view, faded with time, of the Eiffel Tower.

 
‘Paris,’ Mackendrick said, needlessly. ‘Paris, France.’

  Bennett turned the pix over, as if looking for something to confirm its authenticity. He laughed. What confirmation did he need? He was holding - there was no doubt about it - a pix of the Eiffel Tower.

  Even though he knew it was impossible.

  Ten Lee, sharper-eyed than Bennett, pointed to a detail in the pix, a tiny automobile beneath the tower. ‘Look, isn’t that an electric Volvo? That model went out with the ark. It must be a hundred years old.’