Meanwhile the brown tide was making inroads. The stream of marine animals across the strip of sand had stopped. A few had been captured and were being dragged back. No more came ashore.
It was enough for me. I broke toward the flyer in a panicky sprint. The tide continued to roll in. Several rivulets had already pushed across and gone into the ocean on the other side. I splashed frantically through them. They oozed and sucked at my boots. Thank God I hadn’t gone barefoot as I’d been tempted to do.
The flyer was about a hundred yards away. There were pools near it. The brown tide flowed into these, and they began to rise.
I lost balance and went down, thrusting my hands into the goop. It scorched me and I screamed and scrambled to my feet, rubbing my hands against my vest in an effort to get the stuff off.
The tide had reached the landing treads and the ladder. I plodded through it, panicked, but I think I was moving in slow motion all the same, fearful of splashing the stuff, struggling to pull my boots free with each step. I was relieved to see, at least, that it didn’t seem to be able to climb.
Gobs of it got onto my jump suit. I hurried across the last few meters and fell forward against the ladder. The thing rose around my legs and tried to drag me back. I left it both boots.
And I shuddered for Christopher Sim and his people.
Two hours later, I cruised somberly through a gray overcast sky, watching the monitors draw a jagged line across the long curve of the horizon. I was still thoroughly rattled, and promising myself never to leave the cockpit again in unfamiliar territory. It was raining, but no wind blew. The ocean was flat and silent, but I could not get my thoughts away from what might lie beneath the surface. I’d told Saje what had happened and she’d advised me to return to the base site and catch the next ride back to the ship. I’d considered it, but it would have seemed cowardly. So I’d squared my jaw and told her not to worry, and pressed on.
Just stay in the aircraft. That was my motto from now on.
A peak appeared in the mist off to my right. It was granite, worn by sea and weather.
I flew on.
There were others, a range of towers rising smoothly out of the ocean almost directly parallel to the track of the Corsarius. Some had broken and toppled, damaged perhaps by long-ago earthquakes. The formation was so geometrically correct, that I could not escape a sense that I was looking at a planned structure. It occurred to me that, if the people who had come with Sim had been aware of the dangers in this ocean, the brow of one of these peaks would be exactly the kind of place they would have chosen.
I drifted among them, riding the currents, listening to the steady cadence of rock and surf. I searched all day, and when twilight came, I landed atop one of them. The rain blew off and the stars came out, bathing the line of towers and the rolling ocean in brilliant white light. But I didn’t sleep well. And I kept the canopy shut.
The reddish sun was well into the sky when I woke. The air was cold and clear. I checked in with the Tenandrome; they told me my aircraft was needed back at Holtmeyer’s site, and the Captain would be grateful if I returned it.
I was glad to get airborne again, but as I drifted over those gray towers I knew unequivocally that I was right about Sim. And that the proof was here. Somewhere.
I almost missed it. I’d expected that they would have chosen the top of one of the peaks. I found what I was looking for instead on a relatively narrow shelf not quite halfway between the summit and the sea: a dome.
But it was small, and I realized as I approached it that I’d been wrong. They had not marooned Sim and his crew. And I knew with knife-cold suddenness why the Seven had no names!
My God! They’d left him here alone.
I circled for half an hour, finding things to do, checking rations, wondering whether to call McIras, debating if it was not after all best to let the legends be. But I couldn’t just leave it.
Two centuries late, I floated down through the salt air.
The wind blew across the escarpment. The shelf was solid rock. No green thing grew there, and no creature made its home on that grim pile. A few boulders were strewn about, and some loose rubble. Several broken slabs stood near the edge of the promontory. The peak towered overhead, and the ocean lay far below.
I stood uncertainly before the dome in stocking feet, studying its utilitarian lines, the makeshift antenna mounted on the roof, the blank windows with drawn curtains. The sea boomed relentlessly, and even at this altitude, the air felt wet.
Unlike the Corsarius, that shelf gave no sense of recent occupancy. The dome was discolored by weather, and it had been knocked somewhat askew, probably by a quake.
Christopher Sim’s tomb. It was not a very elegant end, on this rough slab, under the white star of the ship that had carried him safely through so much. They had, I believed, intended to come back for him when the war ended and it didn’t matter anymore. And maybe they left the Corsarius as a token of a promise. But things had probably gone awry.
The dome was too small to support more than two or three people. It was nicked and chipped, and an antenna had broken off and lay on the ground beside it. The door was designed to function, if need be, as an airlock. It was closed, but not sealed, and I was able to lift the latch and pull it open. The light inside was gray, and I waited for the dome to ventilate.
There were two chairs, a table, some bound books, a desk, and a couple of lamps. I wondered whether Tarien had come on this long flight out from Abonai, whether there had been a last desperate clash, perhaps in this room, between the brothers! Whether Tarien had pleaded with him to continue the struggle. It would have been a terrible dilemma. Men had so few symbols, and the hour was so desperate. They could not permit him to sit out the battle, as Achilles had done. In the end, he must have remained adamant, and Tarien had to feel he had no choice but to seize his brother and dismiss his crew with some contrived story. (Or perhaps an angry Christopher Sim had done that himself, before confronting Tarien.) Then Tarien had invented the legend of the Seven, concocted the destruction of the Corsarius, and when the engagement was over they’d brought him and his ship here.
Tarien had died a few weeks later, and maybe all who shared the secret died with him. Or maybe they were afraid, in victory, of the wrath of their victim. I stood in the doorway and wondered how many years that tiny space had been his home.
He would have understood, I thought. And if in some way he could have learned that he’d been wrong, that Rimway had come, and Toxicon, and even Earth, he might have been consoled.
There was nothing on the computer. I thought that strange; I’d expected a final message, perhaps to his wife on far Dellaconda, perhaps to the people he had defended.
In time the walls began to close in, and I fled the dome, out onto the shelf that had defined the limits of his existence.
I walked the perimeter, looked at the slabs and the wall, returned along the edge of the precipice. I tried to imagine myself marooned in that place, alone on that world, a thousand light-years from the closest human being. The ocean must have seemed very tempting.
Overhead, Corsarius flew. He could have seen it each evening when the weather was clear.
And then I saw the letters engraved in the rock wall just above my head. They were driven deep into the granite, hard-edged characters whose fury was clear enough, though I could not understand the language in which they’d been written:
ώ^ ποποı^! ώ^ ΔηµοτθÉυης!
It was a paroxysm of anguish directed toward Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator whose silver tongue had tamed the Aegean. Sim had remained a classicist until the end.
The computer had not been enough to contain Christopher Sim’s final protest. Demosthenes, of course, should be read as his orator brother. But I was moved that it was a cry of pain, and not of rage. Scholars have since agreed. After all, they argue, no man in such straits would have stooped to mere mockery. The reference to the Athenian statesman constituted a recognition, probabl
y after long consideration induced by his deplorable position, that Tarien had chosen the correct path. Consequently, the message on the rock could be read as an act of forgiveness, rendered in his final extremity, by a loving brother.
The reputations of the brothers have not been seriously damaged. In fact, in an enlightened society, Christopher and Tarien have risen to the stature of tragic heroes. Dramatists and novelists have recreated the confrontation on the shelf between them time and again, and the idea that they embraced, and parted in tears, has become part of the folklore.
But I’ve thought about it, and I’m convinced it means something else. I’ve read a lot about Demosthenes since that day when I stood before the message in the rock. The dumb bastard used his great oratorical abilities to persuade his unhappy country to make war on Alexander the Great. I think Christopher Sim was still having the last word.
THE TOMB
The city lay bone white beneath the moon. Leaves rattled through courtyards and piled up against crumbling walls. Solitary columns stood against the sky. The streets were narrow and filled with rubble.
The wind off the Atlantic smelled of the tide. It shook the forest, which had long since overwhelmed the city’s defenses, submerging ancient homes and public buildings, forums and marketplaces, and even invading the sacred environs, a plaza anchored at one end by a temple, at the other by a tomb.
The temple was of modest dimensions. But a perceptive visitor might have recognized both Roman piety and Greek genius in its pantheonic lines. It was set in the highest part of the city. Its roof was gone, and its perimeter had largely disappeared into the tangle of trees and brambles.
Save for a single collapsed pillar, the front remained intact. A marble colonnade, still noble in appearance, looked out toward the tomb. Carved lions slumbered on pedestals, and stone figures with blank eyes and missing limbs kept watch over the city.
Twelve marble steps descended from the temple into the plaza. They were precisely chiseled, rounded, almost sensual. The marble was heavily worn. Public buildings, in varying states of disintegration, bordered the great square. They stood dark and cold through the long evenings, but when the light was right, it was possible to imagine them as they had been when the city was alive. A marble patrician stood over a dry fountain. Weary strollers, had there been any, would have found stone benches strategically placed for their use.
The tomb stood alone at the far end. It was an irregular octagon, constructed of tapered marble blocks, laid with military simplicity. The marble was gouged and scorched as high as a man on horseback might reach. And the elements had had their way. If ever it had borne a name, it had long since been worn smooth.
The tomb itself gaped open. The door that had once sealed the vault was gone. Above the entrance, a device that might have been a sword had been cut into the marble. In keeping perhaps with the spirit of the architecture, it too was plain; hilt, blade, and crossguard were all rectangular and square-edged. No tapered lines here.
The vault rose into a circular, open cupola. Two marble feet stood atop the structure, placed wide in what could only have been a heroic stance. One was broken off at the ankle, the other ascended to the lower shin.
On a tranquil night, a visitor so inclined might easily have apprehended the tread of divine sandals.
Three horsemen, not yet quite full-grown, descended from the low hills in the northwest. In the sullen wind they could smell the age of the place.
They wore animal skins and carried iron weapons. Little more than boys, they had hard blue eyes and rode with an alertness that betrayed experience with a hostile world. They were crossing a stream that had once marked the western extremity of the city when the tallest of the three drew back on his reins and stopped. The others fell in on either side. “What’s wrong, Cam?” asked the rider on the left, his eyes darting nervously across the ruins.
“Nothing, Ronik—.” Cam rose slightly in his saddle and looked intently toward the quiet walls that still strove to guard the city. (In some places they had collapsed or been pulled down.) His voice had an edge. “I thought something moved—.”
The night carried the first bite of winter. Falon, on Cam’s right, closed his vest against the chill, briefly fingering a talisman. It was a goat’s horn, once worn by his grandfather and blessed against demons. His mount snorted uncertainly. “I do not see anything.”
The wind was loud in the trees.
“Where?” asked Ronik. He was broad-shouldered, given to quick passions. His blond hair was tied behind his neck. He was the only one of the three who had killed. “Where did you see it?”
“Near the temple.” Cam pointed.
“Who would be inside the city at night?” asked Ronik.
“Nobody with any sense,” Cam snorted.
Falon stroked his horse’s neck. Its name was Carik, and his father had given it to him before riding off on a raid from which he never returned. “It might have been best if we hadn’t bragged quite so loudly. Better first to have done the deed, stayed the night, and then spoken up.”
Cam delivered an elaborate shrug: “Why? You’re not afraid, are you, Falon?”
Falon started forward again. “My father always believed this city to be Ziu’s birthplace. And that,”—he looked toward the temple, “—his altar.”
Cam was, in some ways, a dangerous companion. He wanted very much to be esteemed by his peers, as they all did. But he seemed sometimes extreme in the matter. Willing to take chances. He wanted to be perceived as a warrior, but he had not yet proved himself. He was looking for a chance. His hair was black, his eyes dark. The rumor was that he had been fathered by a southerner.
Cam was middle-sized and probably did not have the making of a good warrior. He would serve, his comrades knew. He would not run. But neither would he ever achieve great deeds.
The road had once been paved but was little more than a track now, grassed over, occasional stones jutting from the bed. Ahead, it angled around to the south gate.
“Maybe we should not do this,” said Ronik. He was perhaps everything Cam would have liked to be. He was tall and strong, and had, until this moment, always seemed utterly fearless. The girls loved him, and Falon suspected he would one day be a war chief. But his time was not yet.
Cam tried to laugh. It came out sounding strained.
Falon studied the ruins. It was hard to imagine there had ever been laughter within those walls, or the birth of children. Or cavalry gathering. The place felt somehow as though it had always been like this. He patted his horse’s neck. “I wonder if the city was indeed built by gods?”
“If you are afraid,” said Cam, “return home. Ronik and I will think no less of you.” He made no effort to keep the mockery out of his voice.
Falon restrained his anger. “I fear no man. But it is impious to tread the highway of the gods.”
They were advancing slowly. Cam did not answer but he showed no inclination to assume his customary position in the lead. “What use would Ziu have for fortifications?”
This was not the only ruined city known to the Kortagenians: Kosh-on-the-Ridge; and Eskulis near Deep Forest; Kalikat and Agonda, the twin ports at the Sound; and three more along the southern coast. They were called after the lands in which they were found. No one knew what their builders had called them. But there were tales about this one, which was always referred to simply as “the City.”
“If not a way station for the gods,” said Ronik, “maybe it serves devils.”
There were stories: passersby attacked by phantoms, dragged within the walls, and seen no more. Black wings lifting on dark winds and children vanishing from nearby encampments. Demonic lights, it was said, sometimes reflected off low clouds, and wild cries echoing in the night. Makanda, most pious of the Kortagenians, refused to ride within sight of the City after dark, and would have been thunderstruck to see where they were now.
They walked their horses forward, speaking in whispers. Past occasional mounds. Past stands of oak.
A cloud passed over the moon. And they came at last to the gate.
The wall had collapsed completely at this point, and the entrance was enmeshed in a thick patch of forest. Trees and thickets crowded in, disrupting the road and blocking entry.
They paused under a clutch of pines. Cam advanced, drew his sword, and hacked at branches and brush.
“It does not want us,” said Ronik.
Falon stayed back, well away from Cam’s blade, which swung with purpose but not caution. When the way was clear, Cam sheathed his weapon.
The gate opened into a broad avenue. It was covered with grass, lined with moldering buildings. Everything was dark and still.
“If it would make either of you feel better,” Cam said, “we need not sleep in the plaza.”
The horses were uneasy.
“I don’t think we should go in there at all,” said Ronik. His eyes narrowed. It was a hard admission.
Cam’s mount pawed the ground. “What do you think, Falon?”
Had he been alone, Falon would not have gone near the place. He considered himself relentlessly sensible. Fight when cornered. Otherwise, the trail is a happy place. He was the smallest and youngest of the three. Like Ronik, and virtually the entire tribe, he had blond hair and blue eyes. “We have said we will stay the night,” he said. He spoke softly to prevent the wind from taking his words along the avenue. “I do not see that we have a choice.”
Somewhere ahead a dry branch broke. It was a sharp report, loud, hard, like the snapping of a bone. And as quickly gone.
“Something is in there.” Ronik drew back on his reins.
Cam, who had started to dismount, froze with one leg clear of the horse’s haunches. Without speaking, he settled back into a riding position.
“Ziu may be warning us,” said Ronik.
Cam threw him a look that might have withered an arm.
Ronik returned the glare. Because Cam was the oldest, the others usually acceded to his judgment. But Falon knew that, if it came to a fight, Ronik would prove the better man at his back. “Probably a wolf,” said Falon, not at all convinced it was. Wolves after all did not snap branches.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 26