by Max Carver
“Loader, clean it up,” Naomi said.
“Loading.” The robot soon transferred the larger chunks of debris from the tunnel to the dump truck, then returned to hold up the newly exposed tunnel ceiling until Hagen secured it with bolts.
Then it was Eric's turn. He rolled up to what remained of the wall and began working the edges of the existing fissure with the roadheader. The rotating drum rumbled as it turned, studded with dozens of cutting teeth in a spiral pattern. Tiny jets sprayed unfiltered river water on the outside of the roadheader as it spun, helping to cool it while transforming the rock dust into a wet slurry that glopped to the floor; otherwise the dust would fly out in blinding, choking clouds of dry volcanic particles. It would almost have been like breathing the smoky air up on the surface, up above the canyons and caves.
When he was done, the narrow fissure that had only been large enough for climbers to wriggle through had become a fairly smooth-walled passageway, enough for people to pass through single file. Vehicles and exoskeletons wouldn't fit, but it was clear Alanna's patience had long since worn away. She'd been pacing the main tunnel, chain-smoking and cursing.
So as soon as the passage was walkable, Eric backed out of the tunnel. The loader bot moved in, first clearing debris from the area and moving it to the dump truck, then propping up the ceiling over the widened fissure and locking itself into place as an added brace.
“Loaded,” the big robot said when it was in position.
Eric parked his exoskeleton along the far side of the main wall, in line with the vehicles. Bartley had already parked his own and climbed out, ready to join the others on foot. Eric disconnected from his exoskeleton and reconnected his leg braces, feeling the usual disappointing sense of shrinking and slowing.
“I'll lead the way, ma'am,” Reamer volunteered. He started down the tunnel, switching on the light of his mining helmet.
“This better not be a waste of my time,” Alanna said. She followed him, trailed by Prentice, who looked with trepidation at the low rock ceiling above.
Iris followed quickly, tablet in hand. The small geologist looked excited, biting her lip and trying to contain herself.
The remaining four people, the team of co-workers who spent every day together in these tunnels, looked at each other.
“I'm going with them.” Bartley clicked on the light of his own helmet, which he'd just put on after leaving his exoskeleton. “I'm not missing out on this. Whatever it is.”
Eric, Naomi, and Hagen followed after, Eric still strapping his helmet into place. His legs moved stiffly, as always, and he walked at the end of the line.
“Shall I come as well?” Malvolio asked.
“Guard our equipment,” Eric told him.
Malvolio gave an overdone sigh, complete with a broad and pointless sweep of one arm, and then sank to his knee in the main tunnel, head bowed low under his top hat, as though completing a scene.
Eric continued on through the newly widened passage, trying to catch up to the others.
“Whoa,” Alanna breathed up ahead.
“This is...amazing,” Iris whispered.
Eric emerged from the passage he'd just carved, then stopped and gaped at the chamber around him. Even Bartley seemed awed into silence.
“It didn't look this big on the screen,” Naomi whispered.
The vaulted roof of the quartz chamber curved high above their heads. Shining quartz tunnels, large enough for a person to crawl through on hands and knees, led away through the ceiling. Each crystalline tunnel was a different color, one dark purple, one a soft hue of blue, another smoky orange.
“This...is...amazing.” Iris studied the hieroglyph-like wall engravings under her helmet light. She drew on a steel-framed pair of thick glasses and adjusted knobs at the sides. The lenses moved forward and back within their frames like the objectives of a microscope. “When you look up close, it's crude, even primitive. These murals are composed of small, irregular fragments of colored quartz, cemented into place on top of the quartz-reef walls here. But when you back up and take the wide view...” She shook her head. “This could potentially have been carried out by a Paleolithic-level culture, I suppose, if they had sufficient labor, organization, and focus...”
Eric looked at the wall closest to him. It was impossible not to admire the detailed figures. Besides flowers and insects, there were also birds that looked fearsome and predatory, with long, thin, pointed beaks and fire-red eyes rendered in intricate detail by hundreds of little quartz fragments.
“You gotta admit, somebody knew what they were doing.” Bartley belched, then clapped Naomi on the shoulder, drawing a scowl and a hard shake-off from her. “You still think the Money City miners did this?”
“None of this makes any sense,” Reamer said. The general manager folded his arms, looking personally offended by the chamber. “This is all supposed to be one big raw quartz reef. Goes on for hundreds of kilometers. How could...where did this come from...who built...” Reamer looked angrier with every question he asked. “Someone should have told us about this!”
“I don't think anyone knew,” Hagen said. He was a man of hard work and few words, which made it difficult to ignore him when he did speak. His eyes were fixed on the last image they'd seen, the gray face with the big black quartz eyes, the one they'd glimpsed just before their robot's transmission ended.
“Would you look at that?” Naomi gestured toward the rest of the statue to which the sculptured quartz face belonged. “I didn't expect to see that in here.”
“That's not human,” Alanna said. Finally, for once, she did not seem the least bit bored. Her eyes seemed to glitter, reflecting all the shiny surfaces around them. “What have we found here?”
Nobody had an answer. The face of the statue, which they'd only glimpsed over the camera, belonged to neither a human nor a gray-goblin alien of yore. The face had large, dark eyes and a pair of antennae growing out of the top. The antennae hadn't fit into the porcupine's camera frame.
The gray head was mounted on a long, slender neck, attached to winged thorax with six legs. The front two legs were extended to the sides, each one ending in three curved claws. Altogether, the insect statue was about the size of a horse, standing on an elevated pedestal of deep red quartz, like a sacrifice on a bloody altar.
Chapter Six
“So...bug worshipers?” Naomi said. “That's what we're dealing with? Some first-wave miners were really, really into bugs, and built a...praying mantis shrine?”
“I'm seeing a lot of bugs on these walls, now that you mention it.” Hagen pointed to the colored-quartz designs nearest him.
“There's a lot to admire about bugs, really,” Prentice said.
“Why would people build all this and then abandon it?” Alanna asked. “Seems like a big waste of cash.”
“They didn't abandon it on purpose,” Hagen said. “The Allies bombed Money City to the dirt during the war. Left no stone standing. It was their punishment for freely trading with the rebel planets, selling them all the gold they needed for their electronics and communications. Eventually there were factories here, building ships and selling them to the Colonial League...and that was that. The first wave of miners and settlers either died in the nuclear attack or they fled. Some of them made it to other worlds and died slowly, withering away from radiation poisoning.”
Eric shuddered.
“But where's our porcupine? I still say aliens,” Bartley said.
“He...may be right,” Iris said, her voice little more than a whisper. She looked up along the curved colored-quartz buttresses that supported the ceiling, intersecting with curving crystal walkways on their way up to steep, almost vertical crystal tunnels above.
More passageways curved out of sight at ground level, past smaller statues of bugs and crystalline plants mounted sideways on the walls. Even more tunnels sloped away out of sight, heading deeper underground, in darker hues of red, blue, and green quartz than the tunnels overhead, as if darker me
ant lower, and brighter meant higher.
Every surface seemed inset with more tiny, colorful quartz designs. Vines and leaves made of splinters of vermarine supported flowers made of flakes of rose and sun-colored quartz, all of it worked with enough skill that the forms looked soft and organic from just a few paces back.
The tree-trunk columns branched out into a canopy of limbs far above, creating what looked like a network of narrow, intersecting walkways, though with no signs of rails or any concern for safety. The thin rock walkways were gently arched over and under each other, the shape probably making them sturdier. Romans and their roads, Eric thought again. Their aqueducts, their arches.
“If it was aliens, it must have been the ancients, right?” Naomi asked, looking at Iris. “The ones who built the wormholes. Had to be. Right?”
“No. The creations of the ancients are much more...advanced. This could have been done by any sentient species with plenty of rocks to break and time to spare.”
“How do you know so much about aliens?” Bartley asked. “Ever seen one? They say the gray ones come out of your closet at night, take you up to space and probe you.”
“I studied under the Antikytheran Society.” Her voice was quieter than ever as she said it. The room fell silent—not that it had been loud before, really, but most people stiffened and looked her way when she said those words. Only Alanna and Prentice continued murmuring to each other and taking images of the room around them, including selfies with the horse-sized insect statue.
“You're a gatekeeper?” Eric asked, astonished. Gatekeepers were the people who studied and learned to operate the wormhole gates built by the ancients. Without a gatekeeper, a starship pilot couldn't safely activate a gate, nor select a destination. Gatekeepers were powerful, secretive types who mostly kept to themselves, almost mythic figures who made interstellar travel possible.
“No, I am not a gatekeeper,” Iris said, and it clearly pained her to say it. “Only about five percent of those admitted to the Society become gatekeepers. There is a great deal of study, even for those with the ability. Most of us end up in support roles—astrophysicists and engineers trying to understand the wormhole gates. There are xenoarchaeologists trying to understand the ancients who built them, and continuing the broader search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, alive or dead. And, obviously, some of us become geologists and biologists to help study and understand all the worlds we're discovering. We are devoted to knowledge.”
“The Antikytheran Society is the rebel gatekeeper society, isn't it?” Hagen asked. The older man seemed to be watching the geologist carefully, evaluating her. Frank Hagen had been a sergeant in the Allied infantry in his younger years, making war on the rebels. Eric had grown up on a rebel planet. His father had served in the rebel military, his brothers were still serving. He'd always felt distant from Hagen because of it.
“It's true,” Iris replied. “The Antikytherans broke off from the older Ptolemaic Society, the original gatekeeper organization. The war broke the gatekeepers into two opposing factions, along with the rest of humanity. Each side needed loyal gatekeepers to transport its military ships between systems.”
“So you've seen stuff like this before?” Bartley asked.
“No. This doesn't exactly match any civilization we've noted so far,” Iris said.
“Wait,” Naomi said. “Just how many alien civilizations have you 'noted'? Besides the ancients?”
“Ah...” Iris shook her head. “That's not my particular area.”
“But you know something,” Alanna said, suddenly engaged in the conversation. “What have the gatekeepers found out?”
“Just...fragments, mostly.” Iris was looking nervous, wrapping her arms tightly around her slight frame. “Occasional ruins with symbols. Sometimes pottery. We haven't found any live civilizations. Intelligence seems to be rare, civilization even rarer. And it doesn't seem to last, either. Things fall apart.”
“That's reassuring,” Eric said. “Bright future for the human race, huh?”
“If the ancients with all their incredible tech managed to go extinct, that doesn't leave much hope for the rest of us,” Hagen commented, scratching his graying beard stubble.
“This is enough standing around,” Alanna said, looking agitated. She had a restless nature, Eric thought. “Let's search these tunnels and see if there's anything valuable in here.”
“More valuable than signs of a lost alien civilization?” Naomi asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Gold or platinum, let's hope. I'll take even take silver as a booby prize.” Alanna started toward one of the curved passageways, this one lined mostly with purple and midnight blue quartz. “Iridium would be lovely...uranium, an unexpected bonus...”
“Wait,” Hagen said.
Alanna looked back at him, eyes blazing. Beside her, Prentice echoed her look, appearing miffed at Hagen on her behalf.
“I'm in charge of safety down here,” Hagen said. “We don't know anything about where these tunnels and hallways lead, but we know this quartz reef had an estimated area of millions of hectares and extends kilometers below us. We could get lost.”
“What do you want us to do, leave a trail of bread crumbs?” Reamer asked. The diminutive general manager shook his balding head.
“Something like that,” Hagen replied, keeping a measured tone against Reamer's sarcasm. “We should make preparations first.”
“As long as you hurry,” Alanna said. “I've done enough standing around today. My screen doesn't even get a signal down here.”
“We could call in Malvolio—” Hagen began.
“Please. His jokes were old when the war started, when the ink on the Declarations of Separation was still fresh.”
“Let's make it happen.” Reamer clapped his hands, as if that would help anything. “Don't keep Miss Li-Whitward waiting.”
The eight of them returned to the main tunnel, where Alanna waved off Malvolio as he gleefully attempted to demonstrate his not-that-impressive one-ball juggling act. Eric wanted to ask where the other two missing balls had gone, but he was afraid it would trigger some kind of overdone histrionics from the drama-bot.
“We need to widen that passageway until the exoskeletons can fit through,” Hagen said. “And secure it. Should take a few hours. Maybe tomorrow—”
“Out of the question,” Alanna said. “I want to see what's in there now. You can do the boring stuff tomorrow without me. I don't even know why I came back out here.”
“You're making her angry,” Reamer said, scowling at Hagen.
“We need a spool of fiber to take with us,” Hagen said. “That'll mark our path back, and keep us in touch with the security bot, who will remain out here.”
“Security bot?” Prentice looked confused.
“Did someone call for me?” Malvolio unicycled closer and gave Prentice an over-the-top imitation of a salute. “Reporting for duty, sir!”
“Oh,” Prentice said. “Right. Could we not afford anything better?”
“Not on our current budget,” Reamer hurried to reply. “It was this entertainment unit or an old bartender-bot. If you like, we can go shop the local salvage yard—”
“Everyone is wasting my time,” Alanna said.
“We should split up into teams,” Reamer said. “We'll explore the rooms faster that way, and we can zero in on anything of real value.”
“Everything in there is of great value,” Iris said. “There are signs of a civilization never before discovered—”
“Yeah, but I mean really valuable. Like gold or platinum,” Reamer said. “Anyway, we'll be tripping over each other and wasting even more of Miss Li-Whitward's time unless we break into teams.”
“There could be drawbacks to that,” Hagen said, scratching his gray stubble. “We can't assume it's safe in there. It could be unstable, there could be more cave-ins. We should focus on securing first, exploring later. And that doesn't even get into the wildlife we could encounter, maybe more c
ave climbers, maybe rock scorpions—”
“It looks safe enough to me,” Alanna said. “The roof is supported by rock pillars.”
“Yeah, it may look safe to you, someone who's never worked as a ground support and safety technician—” Hagen began.
“Watch yourself,” Reamer interrupted, flushing red as he glared at Hagen. “Remember who you're talking to, Hagen. We do what she says. So here's the plan: we split into two teams. Miss Li-Whitward, her attorney, and myself will go together, down whichever path she wants to explore. The rest of you will be the second team.”
Eric understood now. Reamer wanted more face time with Alanna, more chances to schmooze with the boss, with fewer people around to interrupt and distract. That was more than fine with Eric; he definitely felt safer on the second team, which had all the experienced miners plus the geologist, who seemed like a nice enough person. She was timid, but she clearly had studied alien civilizations to some extent, or at least their relics.
“That's acceptable, but I want one of these mine workers with us,” Alanna said, perhaps thinking what Eric had been thinking; Reamer was an office overlord who didn't know a pick ax from a pitchfork. She might have been restless and easily bored, but she was no dummy.
“Oh, smart idea,” Prentice said. “In case there's manual labor involved.”
“Flynn, with us,” Reamer said. The short man snapped his fingers as he pointed at Bartley.
“Heck yeah! You all can just call me Bark-Dog, like my bros do.” Bartley held out one freckled hand, offering Alanna a fist-bump, which she declined. He offered it to Prentice instead, but the jeweled lawyer just frowned, the ruby studs in his lower lip jutting out, like weird fangs or small tusks. Bartley was undeterred. “If rock climbers show up, Bark-Dog will smash 'em to stew for you.”