“Who’s Collin?” asked the Councilman in a shaky voice.
“She commands the landing team,” he said, in a tone intended to suggest he should not have to ask.
They drifted over the island. The sea was very green, and it rolled leisurely across white beaches. The storm was gone. Tall, lush trees dotted the landscape.
“Odd-looking trees,” observed Rotifer.
Not as odd as others Wincavan had seen.
A landing strut appeared. The camera angle changed, and they were looking out to sea.
All motion stopped. “Down,” Collin said in her own language, her voice whispery with excitement. It was always the same with her: Wincavan had followed her onto more than thirty worlds. He wasn’t sure about the sequence; that information, along with so much else, seemed forever lost. It was in the crystals somewhere, but most of them were scattered now. All within reach, within a few miles; but they might as well have been on Omyra.
He shook the thought away, and settled in to enjoy the moment: Collin and Esteban and MacAido emerging from their mystical cocoon into an unknown land. They were cool and crisp and efficient. Yet he knew they shared his own eagerness.
All green. Creel MacAido reacted to a forest that looked like the ones on the home world. He could never listen to MacAido without recalling that he would die horribly on Mindilmas in full view of the cameras. He looked much older on Mindilmas, so Wincavan could console himself with the thought that that terrible event was still far in the future. It was a landing Wincavan still possessed, though he never watched it.
Rotifer of course could not understand their exchanges, and in fact did not even grasp the concept of other languages. The context, however, rendered translation unnecessary.
They looked through the windows of the launch at the seascape, at rocks washed smooth by the tides, at soft-shelled creatures basking in the late afternoon sun, at the line of sinuous growths that marked the edge of a fern forest.
To Wincavan, who knew what was coming, it was an ominous perspective.
The view changed again, and they could see the forward hatch. It slid open to reveal Memori Collin, long-legged, dark-skinned, lovely. She wore a uniform like the ones enclosed in the harder-than-glass cases on the second level. It was a single piece, green and white, with the torch logo prominent on her right shoulder.
It might have been that symbol, the tall, proud flame which appeared on uniforms, on equipment, on the great starships themselves—and which was still emblazoned on a half-dozen plaques mounted in strategic places throughout the Hall—it might have been that symbol which first suggested to Wincavan the fond hope that man might after all have a role to play. Maybe the race that had itself failed might eventually serve as an inspiration to a successor. What else was there to hope for?
The wind caught at her short black hair as she stepped out, and briefly bared the nape of her neck. She carried a weapon, black and polished and lethal, in one hand. She glanced toward Wincavan, seeming to see him. Rotifer leaned forward. “Nice looking bitch,” he said. Wincavan’s knuckles whitened, but he said nothing.
Collin strode away from the shadow of the lander with precision and self-assurance. The rikatak was only minutes away. Wincavan, who knew where to look, also knew that everything would be okay. Nevertheless, his pulse began to pick up.
“They were good,” said Rotifer. “I have to admit that; They were good. Look at these pictures. How did they do it?” He shook his head. “One day well pry out their secrets.”
“Not if you keep auctioning them off,” said Wincavan. “There’s not much left now.”
“Some of this stuff might have direct military application. Can you imagine what it would do to the goliats if we could produce stuff like this?” He waved his hand in the air, as though clearing an obstruction. “I was born too soon. We have a great future, Emory. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Yes,” grumbled Wincavan.
“If we could just understand how they did some of these things. How the lights work. Why most of the buildings are warm in winter and cool in summer. I’m convinced there’s a single principle at work in all of this. Find that principle, and we will have their secrets!” He shook his head sadly. “I know, Emory, that you’re pleased to think no one but you cares about the Ancients. But that’s really not true. The difference between you and me is the difference between science and religion. Reality and dream. We need to see the Ancients for what they were, to approach them with an open mind!”
It would come from a cluster of squat thick-boled trees and vine-choked shrubbery. Wincavan, acting out of a morbid fascination, had watched this scene many times. The thing’s forelimbs were just visible in the vegetation.
Creel MacAido appeared at Collin’s side. He was tall, thin, almost boyish, with vivid green eyes. And he loved her. Wincavan could see it in the chemistry between the two, and he could also see that Creel’s feelings were not returned.
He spoke to her. Something about the landscape, but Wincavan’s command of their language was not complete. It was apparent, from the tone, that the meaning was independent of the words anyhow.
“What’s happening?” asked Rotifer.
“They’re about to be attacked. Can you see the danger?”
The Councilman instinctively pushed back in his chair. And something that was all long insect limbs and razor claws strode casually out of the trees. Rotifer shrieked. The creature was spindly with red eyes and a green crest and a twitching tongue. It rose over Collin and MacAido, spreading paper-thin wings against the sun. And it left the ground. Six sets of legs trailed after it. It might have been a graceful creature save for the viscous orange liquid that spilled out of its curved beak.
They didn’t move. Wincavan was never certain whether he was watching the result of marvellous discipline or stark panic. The rikatak was drifting back down now. A translucent web popped into the air beneath it, connected by the thinnest of threads to its mantle.
The scene darkened, as though a thunderhead had drifted into the blue sky. “Run!” roared Rotifer. “Get the hell out of there!”
The humans threw themselves to the ground. Hot light exploded, the web separated from the creature and fell gracefully. Wincavan stared up at it: The thing pulsed and breathed with anticipation. Long tendrils trailed down.
“Poison,” said Rotifer, his survival instincts at high alert.
The web settled over its victims.
The air grew cloudy and red, and it became hard to see. Blue light tracked up from the ground, the thing chittered and clicked, and everything became confused in a swirl of blood and motion. Then the place went dark.
The sounds of the struggle continued. “The equipment got knocked out,” Wincavan explained. Moments later, the picture was back, and the thing was down, dragging shattered legs, trying to get at Collin with its jaws. She lay on her back, heels dug in to anchor herself, looking for a clear shot past the tangle of fangs and limbs.
The web, which seemed to possess a life of its own, was attacking MacAido. He fought frantically to recover his pistol, which lay a meter or so away. But each movement wrapped the thing more tightly around him. It lurched every few moments, in a reflexive spasm, until his strangled breathing filled the Hall. He’d succeeded in keeping one arm free, but the web was winding strands around his neck.
Then Collin was at his side. She sliced the strands, freed him, and then fried the web with her sidearm. When she finished she walked back toward the downed rikatak, and fired twice more. Wincavan loved the moment.
Esteban finally arrived, but the battle was over.
“Nice weapons,” Rotifer said. “We could use something like those.”
Wincavan smiled. Memori Collin’s pistol lay upstairs, in a glass case beside Candliss’s shirt.
“Good,” the Councilman said, pulling himself together. “Not quite on the level of some of the stuff Gavandy runs on weekends, but it isn’t bad.”
“Gavandy’s images are stor
ies,” said Wincavan, barely able to contain his frustration.
“So are these stories!” Rotifer stared hard at the older man, “For God’s sake, Emory, can’t you see that? Listen, if any of this were true, if there really were worlds floating in the sky, what happened? What happened? What are we doing here? Where is everybody?”
Wincavan touched a presspad, the image died, the lights came on, and the sedate amphitheater returned. “I’ve told you I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you have any answers?”
Wincavan walked down onto the apron where the rikatak had stood. “Who built the City?” he asked quietly.
“The Ancients. And I know that they could do quite a lot that we can’t, but that proves nothing.”
“Where did they go?” persisted Wincavan. “They must once have been much more numerous than we! The City is bigger than we can ride across in a day. It could have held many communities like ours.”
“We don’t know that there ever were other communities.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Wincavan said listlessly. “Marc, sometimes I wonder whether we’re all that’s left. Anywhere.”
Rotifer got up. It was cool, and he pulled his jacket around his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Emory,” he said. “But I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere. The Council needs money, and we either have to collect more taxes or run another auction. Probably, we’ll have to do both.”
“Come on, Marc.” Wincavan was on his feet. “Damn it, there are only a dozen left now. They’re records of who we are. They’re priceless.”
Rotifer’s eyes narrowed. “Emory, it really doesn’t matter. Even if you were right, I don’t think anyone would want to be reminded.”
In the courtyard, it was snowing. Rotifer unhitched his mount, patted the wassoon’s head at the base of its horns, swung into the saddle, and shook his cloak free. He glanced at Wincavan, flicked the reins, and rode out through the stone gate. The storm swirled in his track.
Wincavan shut the door.
He wandered through the ancient structure, past the Projector and the Machines and the sleek furniture that relentlessly outlived the generations of men. He climbed the stairs to the second level, stopped to make tea, and crossed to the museum.
Save for the amphitheater, the broad chamber on the second level was the largest room in the Hall. It was filled with uniforms, goblets, patches, statuary, black shining instruments whose use Wincavan could not guess, set in locked display cases, with illumination provided by push button. Faded murals hung on the walls. They were the only things in the room that seemed to have yielded to time. Nevertheless, it was possible to make out their subjects: cylindrical objects floating against backgrounds of stars and worlds; people standing beside machines in bizarre landscapes; a trail of fire drawn across a peaceful evening sky.
Two portraits dominated the rest. In one, a man and a woman wore the uniform of the explorers. They were clear-eyed and handsome, and Wincavan wondered who they might have been. Perhaps they represented all who had gone before. In the other, a gleaming metal ship passed beneath giant planetary rings.
He paused before the blood-spattered shirt of Oliver Candliss. Curiously, the identifying plate carried only the hero’s name, and the notation Saliron, as though its significance were obvious. Wincavan had walked with that bearded giant into dark Kahjadan, had ridden with him through the electrical skies over a black thing that engulfed whole suns, had accompanied him into the unearthly Gray Temple on Willamine which (if he understood the documents correctly, had never after received human visitors).
He stood over a silver urn, from which Abbas Ti and his team had drunk Micondian brandy before starting on their magnificent rescue of the Toller. There was pottery from the Ingundian Mines, and a row of incisors from a dragon. He smiled wickedly: no one else knew that there were such things! What visions he could induce into the smug dreams of the townspeople if he wished.
(As he walked among the gleaming cases, he felt the eyes of the goliats on his back. He knew from long experience that, if he turned quickly, there would again be only the blur of motion, dimly perceived. But in the morning, he often saw their tracks atop the walls and even in the courtyard. He would have liked to believe they were drawn by something other than the light displays.)
Memori Collin’s pistol lay under glass near the window. It was a smaller weapon than one might have guessed from the images. But its tapering snout looked no less deadly than when it had killed the rikatak.
He would have to be careful to keep it away from the auctioneers. He wondered whether he didn’t have a civic responsibility to turn it over to the town for defense against the goliats. It would be a deadly surprise to the barbarians, who were accustomed to facing only spears, arrows, and rocks. Still, he didn’t like to think of Rotifer’s faction with such a weapon. No way to be sure which way it might be pointed.
A framed document was mounted conspicuously on one wall. The stylistic design of the characters prevented his reading much of it. But it looked like a charter. An imprint of the torch that Collin and Candliss and all the rest wore on their sleeves was set in the lower left corner. There were about thirty rows of text, followed by eight signatures. At the head of the document, in its title, he could make out one word: ‘SURVEY’.
Wincavan loved the warm familiarity of the room. It was the place to which he had come when his son died, uselessly and long ago, in a skirmish with the goliats. And it was here, long before their marriage, that he’d realized how much he loved Tira.
He remembered the last auction. That had occurred two years before, also as a result of the Council’s reluctance to raise taxes. The items preserved in the museum, plaques and uniforms and goblets, were not understood, and consequently of little value to the townspeople. So they had been spared. Only the crystals, those lovely gems that burned with the light of the stars, commanded substantial prices.
At that time they’d sold off twelve, half the remaining collection. (In his grandfather’s time, there’d been several hundred of the objects. If family tradition was correct, no two had been precisely the same hue.)
Now, when Wincavan attended a recital or the theater, he inevitably saw them. Mountainous Andakar was squeezed into the cleavage of the wife of the chief of police; Morinai, with her mysterious abandoned cities, adorned the hair of a tanner’s daughter; and R Leonis III, home of the mightiest sea creatures the survey ships had encountered, decorated a tradesman’s belt buckle.
Wincavan stared out the window at the West Road. It curved past the Hall, into the trees and the dark hills beyond, past the Community farms, into the Wilderness. It was constructed of the same durable material from which most of the ancient structures were built. For the most part, it was in good condition: there were few ruts or holes, although it deteriorated somewhat as one got further from the City.
Snow was falling on it now.
In another age, before travel became so dangerous, he and his father, mounted on wassoons, had penetrated far along the road, had in fact reached Grimrock’s foothills. Those were good days, in some ways the best of his life. That trip had been his passage to adulthood. He had returned with the concerns that haunted him still.
They had fished and hunted, and even spent an evening with the goliats. The creatures had been friendly enough, purring their outlandish songs in a tongue no human had ever learned. But Wincavan had watched the firelight dance in their dark cats’ eyes, and recoiled from the disquieting smiles that were simultaneously engaging and ominous. He’d devoured their steaming meat, and drunk dark wine from a carved flagon that they’d given him afterward to keep. It still stood proudly atop his mantle.
And their females: They were lovely sinuous creatures whose claws flashed while they danced in the firelight. Wincavan recalled the embarrassment with which he had discovered his manhood asserting itself toward inferior beings. Pity. It was an urge he’d never satisfied. Such things were not done, at least not openly So the years had pass
ed, and he’d lost the capability before shedding the inhibition.
No matter.
He drew up the window. Flakes flew into the room. The cold air felt good.
Somewhere down the West Road, several days away, he and his father had found a tower and a group of connected outbuildings. They were on the prairie, twelve hours’ travel from the edge of the forest. The structure had been visible for almost two days, had soared against the sky when they stood at last at its base, taller by far than anything in the City. The sun had blinded them from its mirror walls. But the pools that surrounded it held brackish water and stinging insects.
The heating system had worked, so they’d spent the night inside. The interior was cavernous: enormous spaces which could have contained the Community several times over, (There had been a group of goliats with them, but they had shunned the building and gone on.) What he remembered most: somewhere in the complex, a door creaked and banged in the wind. They’d gone looking for it in the morning, and found it in back of a wide, empty building that would have made a good granary. His father had been unable to fix the door, and had instead removed it and laid it in the long grass.
Since then, Wincavan had seen similar complexes in the histories. They’d serviced the shuttles. And he had for many years dreamed of going back to learn whether there might not be a ship hidden away.
He stood a long time by the window.
Just before midnight, he made up his mind. Trembling, he drew on a shirt. He plucked a heavy robe and some clothes from his closet and, in bare feet, padded down the spiraling stairs to the first level. He circled the outer wall of the amphitheater, which dominated most of the ground floor. In the rear of the building lay the repository, a long narrow room whose walls provided storage cubicles for the crystals. Rows upon rows stood empty now. But here and there, the survivors glittered in the cold light.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 20