A Million Open Doors

by John Barnes

  One thing that did was that the space was considerably smaller than we had realized; all those doorways were only about a meter and a half high, and ceilings in the rooms behind them no taller. The doorways all had identical holes in them, in identical places, as if some sort of standardized hardware had once been mounted there. Al-Khenil volunteered that they had found traces of copper and zinc in all the deeper holes, meaning probably that there had been brass fittings.

  Inside one large, low room, there were carvings, partly covered with soot. "Perhaps they burned sacrifices in here in their later, degenerated days, who can say? Or maybe they used tallow lamps for light. But X rays have seen through the soot, and praise Allah that the soot is there."

  He pulled out a sheaf of pictures and showed us the carvings that the X rays had revealed. "This one, you see, seems to be the periodic table of the elements, but arranged right to left. This seems to be their numbering system, which was apparently to the base sixty and always done as scientific notation—that triple arrow mark apparently is the equivalent of 'E' in our numbers. Much of the rest of it we don't yet understand, but at least they apparently tried to provide us with clues."

  "You said the soot covering the carvings was—"

  "I said praise Allah that it is there. Microscopic examination makes it clear that it built up, year after year, layer after layer, on the carvings, and was never disturbed in all that time. For at least two of Nansen's millennia, they came here and burned animal fat of some kind, although the rapid decreases in quantity for the last three hundred years suggests something was going terribly wrong by then. The Nansen year, is, of course, three-point-two stanyears, so we have more than six thousand stanyears of authenticated occupation here."

  "Deu!" I said, shocked. "Then they were here in the time of ancient Sumer—"

  He shook his head. "Long gone by then. Whoever they were, whatever they were, the outermost layer of soot carbon dates to around 20,000 stanyears ago—just under 17,000 BCE."

  "But how—this planet is not old, and it only had unicellular life, and—" I was sputtering; I could not dare to hope for what this might mean.

  Al-Khenil shook his head again. "No doubt they will make trouble for me because I am telling you this, but it seems to me a terrible thing for the discoverer himself to be kept in the dark. Because Nansen was already living, and neither Caledony nor St. Michael wanted any further terraformation, many routine surveys were not done, and many more were done and recorded but never analyzed. Now that we know where to look, and what to look for, in reanalyzing the data we have found coral under the seas, and chains of impact craters used to divert rivers, and we have some hopes that we may even find some of their machinery out in the Oort cloud or in the asteroids. Nansen was terraformed, however unsuccessfully, once before our civilization did it. The question at hand now is whether we have found the equivalent level civilization—twenty millennia too late—or perhaps, just possibly, remains of a previously unknown high human civilization that somehow collapsed before the last ice age on Earth." I imagine he must have been a fine teacher at his home university; certainly he had plenty of authority and presence as, with a sweep of his outflung arms, he indicated the whole site and said, "The question we are faced with, now that we know this is not a fraud, is which of humanity's long-sought goals we have found—whether we are looking at relics of the Martians, or at Atlantis."

  After we returned, I had a long conference with Shan; he wanted me as a Council of Humanity employee, in permanent regular service, which seemed very strange to me considering the number of things that had gotten smashed up with me around. He said that he didn't think anyone else would have done any better, and pointed out what I would have missed by not coming.

  I wasn't sure why I resisted the offer, but since I did, perhaps to give me more time to change my mind, he got around to mentioning that due to hardship and injury, I had accumulated special leave and a free springer ride to and from Nansen, and could therefore go back and visit Noupeitau for a few weeks if I wished. Moreover, if I declared that Margaret was my fiancée, she could come along. It seemed like as good an excuse as any, and she really did want to see Nou Occitan.

  TWO

  Garsenda met us at the springer, with a big hug for each of us. "You're wearing my gift to you!" she exclaimed to Margaret.

  "Yap. Only thing that might make me presentable. Since supposedly we're getting presented."

  "Oh, you are, of course." Garsenda said. "Not that the Prince Consort is thrilled with the idea, but important people from an offplanet culture, and moreover a general-purpose hero like Giraut here, rate too high for him to ignore. We could spring to the Palace directly if you'd like, but the presentation won't be for another hour and there's time to walk if you'd rather see some of Noupeitau."

  I was deeply grateful to Garsenda for meeting us, because as we walked from the Embassy up the hill toward the Palace, she and Margaret caught up on all the things friends do, and I had time to be alone with my thoughts. Arcturus burned as red as ever, and the colors and shadows were rich and deep, but I had never before seen the extent to which the landscape of Wilson was really only three colors, pitch-black where the sharp-edged shadows fell, deep red on stone or soil, and an odd sort of blue-gray where living plants grew. After so much time on Nansen, when I looked again at my home, though there was more variety, the variety seemed to be only of subtleties; had I not grown up here I might have thought of the landscape as almost monochrome.

  People passed us in the street, but the few who recognized us were warded off with one fierce glance from Garsenda; Occitan merce, at least, was not altogether dead. Margaret's modified Caledon costume was echoed on many young women, who I assumed belonged to this new mode of Interstellar that Garsenda was describing—I overheard her mention in passing that carrying small neuroducer projectile weapons was now so common that "derringer pockets" were an indispensable part of the style, and was amused to realize Margaret had been equipped with seven different places to conceal a small equalizer.

  I had to admit that while the modo atz Caledon did not display the unusually beautiful to particular advantage, it tended to flatter most of the rest—the streets of Noupeitau were no longer apparently filled with a few blazing beauties at which men stared, and a great quantity of "all other" which they ignored.

  As we passed through the Quartier, I saw no one else in Oldstyle costume, and began to feel more than a little prehistoric. I had to admit that what I was wearing had become steadily less popular in the last couple of stanyears before I had gone to Caledony, but all the same I had never expected to see its complete disappearance.

  Or, really, to care so little about it. My main concern now was to make sure that after the presentation, we did some shopping, so that I could get out of these conspicuously unfashionable clothes.

  I had been to Court many times with my father when I was younger, and the ceremony of presentation was familiar, but again there were things I had never noticed as a child—the bored expressions on many of the courtiers, the gaudy overstatement of the soaring decorated arches of the chamber, even the fact that the fanfares were hopelessly overdone, so that the whole thing resembled nothing so much as the Court of Fairyland in a badly done low-budget children's show.

  Yseut, moreover, looked like a mess. She was well-enough dressed—the gown had been chosen to accentuate her large bosom with its deep cleavage while hiding her weak chin with a clever, soft, detached ruff. Whoever had put it on her had done her best, but it was not clear that Yseut knew entirely where she was; she seemed to be disoriented, as if this were all a dream.

  Garsenda leaned over and whispered in my ear. "There's a rumor he beats her, and that he's frightened her into keeping him as Consort."

  I wasn't sure about Yseut, but I also figured out during the ceremony that all the other people of the Court, most especially including Marcabru, were at least moderately drunk. Some of the looks of boredom and inattention were coming from people w
ho couldn't quite focus their eyes, in fact.

  In part, I saw all this because I remembered how splendid Court had seemed to my childhood eyes. Margaret, afterwards, told me that she was utterly enchanted, and besides she had to remember all the proper forms and when to curtsy and so forth, so she didn't see much except the glamour.

  I was glad for her, and gladder still because something about the modified Caledon costume allowed her to be—not pretty, or beautiful, she would never be either—but handsome and dignified, someone that no one would dare to mock.

  At last the ceremony was over, and we were allowed to depart through one of the private south gates. I knew I would have to find Marcabru by himself, since Aimeric could not be here to go Secundo for me, and play through the challenge, but that could as well be done later. For right now, Garsenda, Margaret, and I were going to dinner at the Blue Pig, a favorite place of mine on the edge of the Quarter, which both Garsenda and my father's last letter had assured me had not changed one bit.

  The choice was not mine, however. When we came out of the exit from the Palace, into the Almond Tree Yard, Marcabru was waiting for us, with half a dozen hangers-on in Oldstyle costumes. A glance showed all wore a Patz badge; Marcabru at least intended to fight solo.

  I pressed back with my arm and found empty air; the corner of my eye saw Garsenda already dragging Margaret over to a bench and compelling her (I heard the whisper) to "sit still and don't distract him, he'll be fine."

  Since the donzelhas under my guard were safe, I turned my attention to pressing matters. I made sure of my footing, and that if I backed up there was flat wall and no stone bench to trip me, and spoke to him in Occitan. "Ah, how pleasant, and ah, what a homecoming, to see the Prince Consort in all his besozzled glory. Do you know, Marcabru, you dear old friend, I never thanked you for the letter in which you described the Interstellar parodies of that quaintly tasteless costume of yours ... you remember the letter and the parodies, no doubt, the giant phallus dangling from the seat? I laughed for what seemed a full day as I thought of that, for if only they had known how six or seven of us jovents used to take you up into the bedroom in your father's house, and share you as our woman, and how you used to weep and squeal because there were not enough of us—"

  It was all unnecessary, for I had already challenged him without limit in my letter, but the old wild fight-lust was bursting in my heart, and the drunken rage in his eyes drove me to new heights of creativity. His maniacal hetero masculinity was just the easiest target to hit; this toszet had made himself a parody of the Occitan jovent, one that embarrassed us all, and it was as such a parody that I would bring him down.

  "Why, do you know, my oldest friend of oldest friends, you owner of the best buttocks ever buggered, I do believe you are more fun in bed than the Idiot Queen, and you have even been had by more men, hard though that is to imagine."

  He drew then, the neuroducer extending out from his epee hilt with a loud bang, glowing at me in the shadows, and said in Terstad, "Your bitch is very ugly, and I used to fuck Garsenda half an hour before she would meet you."

  "And your words, the poetry of your Occitan, que merce, old friend." I did not switch languages; I could see that he was having a little trouble following his own culture language, and anything that added to his confusion was in my favor, for though I was sure I could defeat him, I needed to make it seem completely without effort. He took a step toward me, but I popped out my neuroducer and he held a moment, which gave me the chance I wanted to enrage him further. "Another man might have composed some clever phrase and shown off, but our Prince Consort shows us that, however slowly and belatedly, he has mastered the simple declarative sentence—nay, is able to join two of them with a conjunction. Que merce, I say que merce. You must have been spending some of what you've made peddling Yseut on the street on a tutor, my clever, my darling, the favorite whore of all my friends."

  I had gotten matters where I wanted them. His rage drove him straight onto me with neither subtlety nor strategy. Like many drunks he was preternaturally strong because his saturated nerves no longer gave him feedback enough to know he was overstraining his muscles, but with the epee strength matters little, grace and speed are all, and those were completely on the side of my healthy, well-trained body.

  I turned his point as a bullfighter does the bull, flinging his arm out to the side, and slashed his cheek before he could return to guard.

  Bellowing his fury, he lashed out with still greater force, so that my parrying epee bent almost double before slipping through again to scar his other cheek.

  He leapt back dramatically, trying to pretend that he was not injured, but his facial muscles betrayed him; he must be hallucinating big flaps of flesh depending from each cheek.

  I closed slowly, giving up a little reaction time to keep him off balance.

  When had I ever thought of him as formidable? I supposed it was only because I and all our opponents had been in the same condition he now was.

  There was a moment of utter clarity, his black shadow falling on the cobbles of the pavement, his entourage staring open-mouthed at the swift destruction visited on him, his bloodshot piggy eyes locking onto me, the rich folds and drapes of the costumes. For one moment it was like some High Romantic play of two centuries before, a moment of pure Occitan drama and grace—

  He lunged. This time I delicately turned him once more and then slashed the tendons of his blade hand with sure finality. His weapon clattered on the pavement, and, sensing that his hand was no longer on it retracted an instant later. I slashed his chest lightly to make him back up, and stepped over his dropped epee. He was disarmed, wounded, helpless.

  I must give him some credit. Whatever wreck of a human being he was by then, he still had enseingnamen enough. He took one more step back, clasped his hands behind his back, raised his chin, and stood with feet apart. Since it was a fight without limit, he expected now to be tortured, humiliated, or both, and he was making virtue of necessity by refusing to plead for mercy.

  I spoke in Terstad now. "You demanded things of me you had no right to demand, and condemned me for not being what you wished me. If I have insulted you, it has been because you would not listen to me otherwise. If I have defiled your name, it is only so that you will face me, me as I am, and not insist that I wear a mask of your choosing. I wish that this battle of ours may be non que malvolensa, que per ilh tensa sola. Therefore I offer you honorable terms—either honorable yield or honorable death, your choice, with first the handshake of peace between us."

  It was generous of me by Occitan standards, but my generosity was all calculated, for if he accepted my offer I would have far outdone him in merce, and if he refused, though it showed great enseingnamen on his part, my own merce would still be praised for years to come. In that, it was as cynical a bit of career maneuvering as any I had ever done.

  "Ages atz infernam," he said, firmly.

  "Per que voletz." I strode to him, drew a cord from my belt, and bound his hands, shaming him by indicating that I did not think he could hold them in that pose himself.

  Then, as the crowd gasped in shock, I jerked down his breeches, forced him over a bench, and beat his buttocks with my bare hand until I was sure he would be badly bruised. Then, and it was at this point that Occitan opinion held that I went too far, I walked away without giving him the coup de merce, thus not giving him an excuse to hide in a hospital for the several days it took to be revived. Let him face, now, having to stand up, cover himself, and go home. Let him have to keep his afternoon appointments with the humiliation fresh upon him.

  As we sat over lunch later, Margaret stared at her plate and picked at her food; I realized how it must have seemed to her. We barely spoke; toward the end of the meal, Garsenda suggested that she and Margaret might want to go shopping, and I added one more to the uncountable pile of favors I owed my old entendedora. I myself headed up to Pertz's, now a prominent Interstellar hangout, after buying conservative street clothing. No longer
dressed like the old vus of me, I wasn't recognized by anyone but Pertz, and he and I spent a pleasant time catching up on gossip.

  Most of the gossip was about people who had hung up the epee and moved from the Quartier.

  Margaret never really spoke about the fight with Marcabru. I don't know what Garsenda said to her, if anything, but a day or so later Margaret seemed the same as ever.

  I freely admit that I lacked the courage to ask.

  The day we got on the coaster ferry to go visit my parents in Elinorien, Garsenda came down to see us at the docks. "By the way," she muttered in my ear, "I know you wouldn't have believed a thing he told you, but I wanted the pleasure of saying that Marcabru made passes at me several times while you and I were in finamor, and I turned him down every single time."

  I grinned at her and said, "I assumed as much."

  Margaret and I had a marvelous time taking the coaster up to the little port, and she got along fabulously with my mother. I spent a lot of time walking with my father, along the many trails that wove up from the coast to the mountains, and he even got me to help a bit in the garden. He wanted to know everything about the mountains and trails of Nansen; it occurred to me, to my deep surprise, that after all the man was only in his early fifties, and that if Shan was right and springer prices were low enough for routine tourism ten stanyears from now, my father and I might yet get a chance to hike through Sodom Gap together.

  Margaret and my mother spent all their time over at the university; my mother was in fact the only reason anyone knew the name "Leones" in the Inner Sphere, for she was an authority on archived cultures—the groups that had not been able to raise enough money fast enough to launch colony ships during Diaspora, and so had been recorded extensively and then quietly, regretfully, but inexorably assimilated during the Inward Turn. I had grown up with my mother's constant talking about the Amish, the Salish, the Samoans ... and now every night in the guest bungalow, Margaret seemed to echo it, though her fascination was more with how the recording had been done.