Arkady and Irina taped the two men while Alexandra kept her gun leveled.
“Are you recording?” Arkady asked after they were done.
“Yes,” Maggie said. “But I’m having trouble with my radio signal here. As soon as we are outside, I will send the photos to Venusport.”
Arkady set a knife on the table next to Mike’s gun. “It will cut the tape,” he said to Mike. “Even if your comrades don’t come looking for you, you’ll be able to get free.”
“That may be a mistake,” Boris said.
Arkady nodded. “We all make them. Let’s get out of here.”
They left the room and retraced their way through the mazelike stone corridors. No one appeared though they did encounter a scorpion, crawling over the floor. It was dirty pink with tiny eyes, thirty centimeters long and the ugliest land scorpion Ash had ever seen. Boris stepped on it hard, crushing its exoskeleton. The many legs kept scrabbling, and the mandibles twitched back and forth, but the animal’s body could not move. It was broken. “This is why we wear tall boots,” he said.
They found the trucks where they had left them. Rain still fell heavily.
“I can send the recordings now,” Maggie said.
“Do it,” Jason said. “I am going to write an exposé that will rip those guys apart. They were ready to kill us.”
They ran for the trucks, climbed in, and pulled out, going along the track away from the ruins.
Ash could feel her heart beating rapidly. Her mouth was dry, and she was shaking. Fear fighting with amazement. She had been inside ruins built by aliens, and she had escaped from the CIA. What a day!
Baby was in his cage, shivering and repeating “bad, bad” over and over in a quiet voice.
“Okay,” Ash said after her heart slowed down. “What was that about?”
Arkady leaned forward and checked the truck radio, which was off. “We knew the CIA was here and that they had some kind of agreement with the Petrograd executive committee. We knew about the circles. And we had this.” He handed her a tablet. On the screen was a piece of sculpture, deeply worn and barely recognizable as a person. It had two arms and two legs, all long and thin, the legs together and the arms folded across the chest. The person’s torso was short and wide, its neck long and narrow, its head wedge-shaped.
“This might be expressive distortion,” Arkady said. “Or it might be an alien. It is only ten centimeters long. It was found in the outback in the early days of settlement, and it ended in the Petrograd Museum. The curators thought it was fake. It remained in the collection but was never investigated.”
“We learned about it and put it together with the circles,” Boris said. “Do you have any idea how much money Petrograd could make from tourism if we had authentic alien ruins?”
“Who are you?” Ash asked.
“People who want to embarrass the executive committee,” Arkady said. “Can you imagine what Lenin would have said about that collection of petty bureaucrats? Now National Geographic will publish its exclusive. With luck, there will be a huge stink. The Petrograd Soviet will decide to remove the executive committee, and the CIA will be so embarrassed that it will leave Aphrodite Terra.”
“That’s too much to hope,” Boris growled.
“Maybe,” Arkady replied. “In any case, we couldn’t pass up the chance. The entire solar system pays attention to the National Geographic.”
“What about the bug in the lodge?” Ash asked. “Mike said it wasn’t one of theirs.”
“It was CIA, but they didn’t put it in the lodge. Some of our farm workers found it crawling in the fields, heading toward Petrograd, and sent for the police. They captured it. I brought it with us,” Boris said. “We wanted Nat Geo to see what we had to put up with. Poisonous robot spies! They are a crime against nature and peaceful coexistence!”
The truck was bumping over the rough road, among dripping trees, while rain beat on the windows. Looking back, she saw the other truck, dim in the rain.
“I feel as if everything has been fake,” she told the two men. “You set up the robot scorpion and you set up discovering the circle.”
Arkady said, “The circles are real, and they are not impact craters, though we don’t know what they are. Ball courts? Fishponds? Temples?
“And the tunnels are real. We didn’t know about them, but now they will be famous.”
Boris added, “Those idiots on the executive committee were so afraid that they let the CIA camp on a site of systemwide historical importance. We have been slowly dying when we could have made a fortune from tourism. Why would anyone go to Venusport when they can come here and see alien ruins?” He was silent for a moment, then added, “We’ll have to get rid of their damn pink scorpions. That won’t be easy. And then take a serious look. Who knows what may be in the caves and circles? More statues like the one in the museum? Maybe even a skeleton?”
“Who are you guys?” Ash asked.
Arkady laughed. “I am myself. Arkady Volkov of Volkov Tours. Boris is a part-time employee.”
“What else does he do?”
“I’m an analyst for the political police,” Boris replied. “But my hours have been cut because of the Soviet’s cash flow problems—which we would not have if we had more tourists.”
“Or if the executive committee stopped listening to American economists,” Arkady added.
“I don’t want a lecture on economics,” Boris said. “I needed a second job. Arkady gave me one.”
“And Irina and Alexandra?” Ash asked.
“Ordinary working people,” Arkady said.
“Could the CIA really have been stupid enough to create a new kind of scorpion?” Ash asked.
“Remember that no one has ever gone broke by underestimating the intelligence of Americans,” Arkady said.
“This seems way too Byzantine,” Ash added.
Boris gave a rasping laugh. “Arkady’s ancestors came from some damn place in Central Asia. But I am Russian, and Russians are the heirs of Byzantium.”
They made it back to the pillbox lodge at nightfall. Arkady and Boris checked the parking space with flashlights and called all clear. They went in through the rain.
Arkady turned on the fire, as the rest of them pulled off their wet jackets and hung them up to dry.
“I’ll start dinner,” Alexandra told them. “Irina, will you help?”
The ex-cop and the ex-stevedore went into the kitchen. Ash sat down in front of the fire, Baby’s cage on the floor next to her. Baby climbed on top of the cage. “Hungry.”
She found a piece of chow and gave it to him.
“Hunt,” he said.
“Not now.”
Jason and Maggie joined her, the journalist settling into a chair, the Leica standing on her four silver legs, her long neck stretched out, head turning as she made another recording.
“I think we can call the trip successful,” Jason said. “We have discovered the first evidence of intelligent aliens, and I have a dramatic story about fighting the CIA.”
“I suspect the CIA part of the story will vanish,” Arkady said. “But you will have the alien ruins.”
“I’ll fight for the entire story,” Jason said. “It’s outrageous that we were threatened by our own government.”
“We’ll go back to Petrograd,” Arkady said. “I will show you a piece of sculpture at the museum, and you might be interested in talking to the Soviet’s executive committee. Ask them what they were thinking to let the CIA perch in the most important piece of archeology in the solar system. God knows what kind of damage they might have done! War—overt or covert—is not good for art or history.”
Boris set a bottle of fruit brandy on the table, along with four glasses. “I’ll go back. I have worked as an exterminator. I want to know what’s in the tunnels and the caves, aside from vermin; and I will enjoy getting rid of those damn pink scorpions.”
After dinner, in her bedroom, Ash considered the journey. She was a little buzzed from al
cohol and shaky from adrenaline. But nothing was happening now. She could finally think.
The circles and tunnels could not have been faked. She was less certain about the figurine. It didn’t have the glassy surface of the stone in the circle and the tunnels; and even if the government in Moscow hadn’t been interested in science, it would have been interested in an alien figurine. That had to have some kind of propaganda value. Unless they were afraid of it. Would fear have made them put it in a museum and forget it?
It would be easy to fake something as small as the figurine. Arkady said it was in the Petrograd Museum, but he could have brought it with him, planning to plant it near the circle for Jason to find. That and the toxic scorpion in the lodge would have given National Geographic its big story. With luck, the story would have forced the CIA out and brought down the executive committee.
She could imagine Arkady learning who the client was and hurriedly putting together an elaborate con. Never trust a Leninist entirely. And she could imagine him as completely honest. As far as she knew, he always had been.
Well, if the figurine was fake, that would be discovered, probably quickly.
But the ruins had to be real. She lay there, her light still on, considering the possibility that humanity was not alone. Where were the aliens now? In the solar system? Or had they moved on? And what difference would knowledge of them make to Earth, shambling toward destruction? Or to Venus, tied to Earth and maybe unable to survive on its own? Ash had no idea. But the world—the two worlds—had suddenly become more interesting and full of possibility.
“Turn light off,” said Baby, hunched in his cage. “Sleep.”
THE END
Note: Our Venus rotates backward compared to most planets in the solar system, and its day is longer than its year. The current theory is it was dinged by something big early in the development of the system. The ding turned it backward and slowed its rotation. In my alternative history, this ding did not happen. My Venus rotates forward and has a day about as long as that of Earth or Mars. This rotation gives it a magnetic field, which our Venus does not have. The field prevents—at least in part—the development of the planet’s current toxic greenhouse atmosphere. In addition, there was a ding that didn’t happen in our history, at least as far as we know. A body—possibly two—hit Earth after life had developed there, then went on to hit Venus, depositing Earth microbes. As a result, my Venus has blue-green algae, and this over time gave it an atmosphere comparable to Earth. The similarity of Venusian life to life on Earth is due to the shared genetic history.
The history of Earth is the same as in our time line, until Soviet probes discover that Venus is habitable. Then a serious space race begins. The cost of the race helps to destroy the Soviet Union and helps to distract the United States from dealing with global warming.
As you may have noticed, the Pecheneg machine gun was never used. Chekhov was wrong. You can put a gun on the wall in the first act and never use it.
DAVID BRIN
Change may not be good, but it’s often unavoidable—especially when it’s your whole world that’s about to change …
David Brin entered the science-fiction field in the late 1970s, and has been one of the most prominent SF writers in the business ever since, winning three Hugo Awards and one Nebula Award for his work. Brin is best known for his Uplift series, which started in 1980 with Sundiver, and subsequently has continued in Startide Rising, which won both a Hugo in 1984 and a Nebula in 1983, The Uplift War, which won a Hugo in 1988, and then on through Brightness Reef, Infinity’s Shore, Heaven’s Reach, and Gorilla, My Dreams. There’s also a guide to the Uplift universe, Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin’s Uplift Universe, by Brin and Kevin Lenagh. He won another Hugo Award in 1985 for his short story “The Crystal Spheres,” and won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1986 for his novel The Postman, which was later made into a big-budget film starring Kevin Costner. Brin’s other novels include Kiln People, Kiln Time, The Practice Effect, Earth, Glory Season, Sky Horizon, and, with Gregory Benford, Heart of the Comet. His short work has been collected in The River of Time, Otherness, and Tomorrow Happens. He edited the anthology Project Solar Sail with Arthur C. Clarke, and has published several nonfiction books such as The Transparent Society, Through Stranger Eyes, and King Kong Is Back!: An Unauthorized Look at One Humongous Ape. His most recent book is a new novel, Existence.
The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss
DAVID BRIN
1.
TODAY’S THUMP WAS OVERDUE. JONAH WONDERED IF IT MIGHT not come at all.
Just like last Thorday when—at the Old Clock’s midmorning chime—farmers all across the bubble habitat clambered up pinyon vines or crouched low in expectation of the regular, daily throb—a pulse and quake that hammered up your foot soles and made all the bubble boundaries shake. Only Thorday’s thump never came. The chime was followed by silence and a creepy letdown feeling. And Jonah’s mother lit a candle, hoping to avert bad luck.
Early last spring, there had been almost a whole week without any thumps. Five days in a row, with no rain of detritus, shaken loose from the Upper World, tumbling down here to the ocean bottom. And two smaller gaps the previous year.
Apparently, today would be yet another hiatus …
Whomp!
Delayed, the thump came hard, shaking the moist ground beneath Jonah’s feet. He glanced with concern toward the bubble boundary, more than two hundred meters away—a membrane of ancient, translucent volcanic stone, separating the paddies and pinyon forest from black, crushing waters just outside. The barrier vibrated, an unpleasant, scraping sound.
This time, especially, it caused Jonah’s teeth to grind.
“They used to sing, you know,” commented the complacent old woman who worked at a nearby freeboard loom, nodding as gnarled fingers darted among the strands, weaving ropy cloth. Her hands did not shake though the nearby grove of thick vines did, quivering much worse than after any normal thump.
“I’m sorry, grandmother.” Jonah reached out to a nearby bole of twisted cables that dangled from the bubble habitat’s high-arching roof, where shining glowleaves provided the settlement’s light.
“Who used to sing?”
“The walls, silly boy. The bubble walls. Thumps used to come exactly on time, according to the Old Clock. Though every year we would shorten the main wheel by the same amount, taking thirteen seconds off the length of a day. Aftershakes always arrived from the same direction, you could depend on it! And the bubble sang to us.”
“It sang … you mean like that awful groan?” Jonah poked a finger in one ear, as if to pry out the fading reverberation. He peered into the nearby forest of thick trunks and vines, listening for signs of breakage. Of disaster.
“Not at all! It was musical. Comforting. Especially after a miscarriage. Back then, a woman would lose over half of her quickenings. Not like today, when more babies are born alive than warped or misshapen or dead. Your generation has it lucky! And it’s said things were even worse in olden days. The Founders were fortunate to get any living replacements at all! Several times, our population dropped dangerously.” She shook her head, then smiled. “Oh … but the music! After every midmorning thump you could face the bubble walls and relish it. That music helped us women bear our heavy burden.”
“Yes, grandmother, I’m sure it was lovely,” Jonah replied, keeping a respectful voice as he tugged on the nearest pinyon to test its strength, then clambered upward, hooking long, unwebbed toes into the braided vines, rising high enough to look around. None of the other men or boys could climb as well.
Several nearby boles appeared to have torn loose their mooring suckers from the domelike roof. Five … no six of them … teetered, lost their final grip-holds, then tumbled, their luminous tops crashing into the rice lagoon, setting off eruptions of sparks … or else onto the work sheds where Panalina and her mechanics could be heard, shouting in dismay. It’s a bad one, Jonah thought. Already the hab
bubble seemed dimmer. If many more pinyons fell, the clan might dwell in semidarkness, or even go hungry.
“Oh, it was beautiful, all right,” the old woman continued, blithely ignoring any ruckus. “Of course in my grandmother’s day, the thumps weren’t just regular and perfectly timed. They came in pairs! And it is said that long before—in her grandmother’s grandmother’s time, when a day lasted so long that it spanned several sleep periods—thumps used to arrive in clusters of four or five! How things must’ve shook back then! But always from the same direction, and exactly at the midmorning chime.”
She sighed, implying that Jonah and all the younger folk were making too much fuss. You call this a thump shock?
“Of course,” she admitted, “the bubbles were younger then. More flexible, I suppose. Eventually, some misplaced thump is gonna end us all.”
Jonah took a chance—he was in enough trouble already without offending the Oldest Female, who had undergone thirty-four pregnancies and still had six living womb-fruit—four of them precious females.
But grandmother seemed in a good mood, distracted by memories …
Jonah took off, clambering higher till he could reach with his left hand for one of the independent dangle vines that sometimes laced the gaps between pinyons. With his right hand he flicked with his belt knife, severing the dangler a meter or so below his knees. Sheathing the blade and taking a deep breath, he launched off, swinging across an open space in the forest … and finally alighting along a second giant bole. It shook from his impact and Jonah worried. If this one was weakened, and I’m the reason that it falls, I could be in for real punishment. Not just grandma-tending duty!
A “rascal’s” reputation might have been harmless, when Jonah was younger. But now, the mothers were pondering what Tairee Dome might have to pay, in dowry, for some other bubble colony to take him. A boy known to be unruly might not get any offers, at any marriage price … and a man without a wife-sponsor led a marginal existence.
But honestly, this last time wasn’t my fault! How am I supposed to make an improved pump without filling something with high-pressure water? All right, the kitchen rice cooker was a poor choice. But it has a gauge and everything … or, it used to.
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