by Kir Lukovkin
He was dressed in a clean long coat, dark trousers, polished black shoes and a... hat on his head. Rick could barely remember what the object was called.
“The weather?” Rick asked in surprise, exchanging glances with Paul. “It's not that great, but each to their own. Do you live here?”
“It's especially wonderful to breathe clean air when the weather is so good,” the stranger spoke again. “But my teeth used to hurt from the cold once upon a time.”
Rick frowned and Paul looked confused.
“And I have solved this problem!” the stranger happily reported. “Yes! Yes! Now that I use Oriental toothpaste, I have no issues at all.”
“What does this mean?” Paul exclaimed.
“So try it, what if it helps?” the stranger inclined his head and touched the brim of his head, blinked and disappeared.
Paul rushed over to the bench and started to prod it on every side.
“By the Holy Maus, what is this?”
“This is what you would call a ghost,” Rick smiled. “In reality it's just a high quality hologram. What amazes me is something else. Why does it still work?”
He walked around the side of the bench and reported, “Well, here's the answer. Solar batteries!” He pointed at the other side of the back of the bench. “The light falls on them, feeds the processor and launches the hologram, which is a moving three dimensional picture. There are probably special devices called motion detectors nearby. We came near and the hologram switched on.”
“Can this be of any use to us? I'm talking about the batteries.”
“I think so.”
They spent a quarter of an hour removing the small panel of photoelectric cells and carefully disconnecting the wires together with the current converter.
“Ugh...” Paul grunted when he felt the backpack get heavier.
“You suggested it yourself,” Rick clapped his companion on the shoulder. “Once we make camp, we will go through our gear and I will take some of it, but you will still have to carry most of it. My hands must be free, with nothing restricting my movement so I can easily use weapons.”
Paul nodded and they started to walk away from the square until they came across a partially collapsed wall at the edge of the city. The wastelands began again beyond it.
“There's another sign over there,” Paul pointed at something the resembled an arch. “It's very big.”
They approached the arch. Half of the letters on the sign were missing and the remainder formed the words “ — a — t — ry XX — US — Bstn.”
“What could this mean?” Paul asked.
The question hung in the air. Rick stayed quiet, going through possible words and their meanings in his head. Could it be a factory? But there were no large or industrial buildings in the city. Just in case, he wrote the letters down on a piece of paper and walked through the arch, stepping along a road of yellowish slabs which was slightly raised above the ground.
Once they were some distance from the city, he spoke, “The Ancients had special places where they stored items from the past to show how the lives of humans changed with time. Those places were called museums. Children went there to study history — they looked at all of these different objects and the museum staff, who were especially appointed people, made sure that all the objects were safe. I have a feeling that we just visited a place of this kind.”
“These clothes are so warm,” Paul noted with satisfaction. “If the Ancients knew how to make things like this, they deserve respect.”
Rick did not reply, but he gave his companion an approving glance.
Surprisingly, the road was rather well-preserved. They occasionally came across mounds of earth and cracks with the twisted branches of bushes growing out of them, but it was generally easier to walk along it than the stony and frozen plain, which was covered with hillocks. There were signs placed along the edge of the road at even intervals with nearly faded inscriptions that were combinations of numbers. Rick noticed that the numbers changed as they got further and further away from the city — “42-100”, “42-000”, “41-900”.
“It looks like these number markers signify distances.” he finally guessed. “So that you know how much is left until the place where you are going.”
“What are the measures? Strides?”
“No, people used to have different measurement units — kilometers, miles, meters and feet. The first number could mean...” Rick thought for a moment. “The length of the road we are on in kilometers. The second one is probably the meters. One meter is around one stride and a kilometer is a thousand. Are you watching our surroundings?”
“Yes.”
“And I think that you are getting distracted! Your eyes must be open all the time. You must see and notice everything that is unusual, every little thing, but you mustn't forget about your ears. So, you have seen the Tombs. What do you think?”
“They don't look like a graveyard.”
“Great. Any other thoughts?”
“There's no sign of humans. Apart from that... ghost. As if something or some sort of power forced them to abandon all that they were doing at once and leave. Or disappear.”
“I also thought so,” Rick agreed. “The question is, what sort of power? Do you have any suggestions?”
“No,” Paul shrugged. “Maybe they were possessed?”
“That's the version that first comes to mind,” Rick nodded. “But... it's too obvious.”
“That seems to trouble you. Is it too simple?”
“Yes. The answer lies on the surface, but I am used to getting to the bottom of things.”
They kept walking along the road and came across the highway sign that old Book of Faces had described to them.
“We're going the right way!” Rick declared.
Paul smiled and nodded.
After the sign the road looked very well looked after — no cracks or bushes. Paul immediately noticed this because the color of the surface they walked on changed from yellowish to gray.
“Hmm, that's strange,” Rick said as he crouched and touched the rough surface of the road. “It looks like plascrete — a special material that was used to construct the building I used to live in. It's a very durable and hard material that can withstand a lot of stress from high pressure to cold, heat, acids and alkalis. The buildings in that city were also built out of it. Stone would have cracked a long time ago and brick would have turned to sand.”
“How much time would have had to pass?”
“A huge length of time.” Rick looked at Paul. “I couldn't give you a number. And it is this mystery which never lets me rest. I have spent months trying to find out, but I still haven't established the exact date when the Ancients perished.”
They walked for almost the whole day along the renovated highway which never turned, split or ended and kept stretching out smoothly into the distance until they saw a dark line of irregular sized constructions on the horizon. The setting sun made it difficult to make them out. Rick could feel that his goal was close and the lower the sun was in the sky the quicker he wanted to get to the legendary city. He hurried along, forgetting about his tiredness, but the rapidly approaching dusk made him stop. They left the road and prepared to spend the night.
And in the morning, the world around them was completely different.
G
THE PLAIN THAT SURROUNDED them had changed to a deep valley, but the road remained on the same level, upraised on a solid base and running into a long arched bridge over a swift and narrow river.
Rick walked up to the edge and looked down — it was a monumental construction, especially considering the amount of plascrete that had to be used for the base that supported it.
“Look,” he told Paul, pointing with his hand.
There was a rocky ridge ahead, with a steep slope covered in trees. The road cut into the ridge, running along through the crevasse. Crying birds circled the tops of the trees nearby.
Rick looked back and reali
zed what a long way they had traveled — the abandoned dead city could barely be seen in the morning twilight.
They soon reached the crevasse. The black cliffs hung over their heads and the intertwined roots of trees could be seen among the rocks in some places. The birds kept crying somewhere off to the side, but they could not be seen. There was a thickening mist ahead of them. The world seemed to melt into a milky white cloud. Rick glanced behind him — even the sun had turned into a pale spot.
“Keep close,” he ordered, just in case.
They kept walking, carefully looking ahead. Step by step and trying to keep quiet. They could not hear the birds anymore and it became noticeably darker, with the cloying silence making them feel even more tense. Rick stopped. Paul went still by his side, his mouth open. There was a huge tunnel entrance up ahead. Rick quietly lit a torch and resolutely headed inside.
The light of the torch barely penetrated the thick mist. They almost walked into the wall a couple of times when there was a turn in the tunnel. Rick was afraid of walking in the wrong direction by missing a crossroads, but he did not show it, choosing the only tactic that he thought was right — keeping to the middle of the road.
The tunnel suddenly ended. It became noticeably lighter, but Rick and Paul did not start to talk and especially did not stop, quietly stepping ahead and trying to get as far away as possible from the oppressive cold and uncertainty of the mountain tunnel. The mist gradually cleared and it became markedly warmer. They soon started to see signs with numbers showing the distance they traveled. Once the “25-000” sign was behind them, they came across a crossroads where the road split into five directions.
“Here are the crossroads,” Rick said thoughtfully. The looked around and ordered, “Read me the signs.”
Paul obediently started to read, “It says “Sanctuary XX-US” on the one pointing where we came from. The one to the left of it says “Sanctuary XIX-UK”, the one to the right says “Sanctuary XXI-FR” and even further to the right it says “Sanctuary XXII-GER.” The very last one has no writing on it, just the sign that Book of Faces told us about.”
Rick stared at the sign. A circle, divided up by a cross with dots in two of the four sections. But of course! They had been to the sanctuary of the ancient city. He looked around again and exclaimed, “Oh, there's another clue here!”
“Where?” Paul asked, looking around himself.
Rick nodded at the damp surface of the road where there was an inscription saying “A-III ATLANTIS.” They re-read the signs and looked around the crossroads to see if they could find any more but did come across anything.
“What are we going to do?” Paul waited for his orders.
Rick took off his bag and took out an old piece of paper that had been rolled together. He found an empty sheet, put it on top of his toolbox and asked, “You can draw, can't you? I need a new map.”
“But I never saw the original.”
“I'm going to tell you what I remember and you just draw. Come on.”
“But why me? There's nothing difficult about it.”
“Trust me, you will do it better,” Rick insisted. “Don't argue, get to it."
Paul muttered that he was at least better at something, bent over the page and took out his piece of graphite.
Rick began, “First things first, mark all the sides of the world. North at the top, south at the bottom, west on the left and east on the right. Excellent! Right. Now draw a dot right here. Put a “T” above it. That means Thermopolis, the building in which I was born...”
Paul drew all over five sheets until he came to the crossroads. He carefully transferred all that was written on the signs to the map and looked at Rick, waiting for further instructions.
“Not bad,” Rick congratulated him and slapped his shoulder. “I definitely couldn't do it like that.”
“You're not planning to go back, are you?” Paul asked in surprise, putting the remaining half of the piece of graphite into his pocket.
“I don't know,” Rick shrugged. “Anything can happen in this life.”
He folded the sheets and started to put his equipment away. When he was done, he declared, “Great deeds await us. Shall we go on?”
Paul chuckled and nodded — he had no choice anyway. Rick confidently strode off in the direction the highway sign pointed. They soon started to feel hot because of their brisk pace, so they undid their jackets. Lone trees started to appear by the roadside — twisted and stunted, they stretched their branches towards the sun that had finally cleared the mist away. The rocky slopes by their sides were becoming less steep and Rick soon stopped to catch his breath and have a look around.
They came to the end of the defile and there was a new valley ahead, with low clouds moving slowly above it. The highway stopped at a pair of gates down in the valley which was built into a tall rampart made of earth. The ground in front of the rampart was black, as if it was burnt by fire. Here and there, lop-sided metallic structures glinted in the sun against the blackness, frozen in time by the side of the rampart.
Rick could not discern the purpose of the structures, but something suggested to him that these were ancient construction machines that may have been cranes. Why would they need supports otherwise?
Beyond the rampart, the rays of the sun played on domes similar to those that covered the settlements in the wastelands, but much larger. But this was not what surprised Rick.
He held his breath, standing motionless as he stared up into the clouds above the place where the thin yellow thread of the highway was leading... The road was visibly elevated there as it ran into the base of something... Something incredibly tall.
The top of the structure disappeared somewhere in the skies, but Rick knew for sure that this was it. A Citadel!
“Can you see that?” he grabbed Paul by the shoulder and pointed at the tower. “Can you?”
“I... I see something,” Paul replied with a note of fear in his voice. “Even though I don't understand what it is...”
Rick tensely stayed rooted to his spot, trying to make out the details. The Citadel rose in the center of a gigantic disk that was broken into clearly defined segments which were bordered by the earthen rampart.
But how was he to understand this? Where was the city? According to what he once saw around Thermopolis, buildings, warehouses, vehicle hangars and roads should have been there... But there was only a gray, disk-shaped plateau which was split into segments.
“Let's go,” he finally announced.
Paul did not dare to ask any questions and obediently fell in by his side.
Rick ran the last few meters before the gates, without looking around. Paul became seriously worried, as he remembered Rick's instructions and kept his eyes peeled, but everything was quiet around them. The sun shone softly through the clouds, stroking their skin with its warm rays.
The gates were extremely tall and seemed to have been cast in a single, huge mold. It would be impossible to move them, but Rick did not even try. He threw the things he was carrying down on the ground and readied his blaster as he walked to and fro touching the cavities and bulges on the metallic surface.
“Why are you standing around? Help me!” he turned to Paul.
“But how? We won't be able to move them!”
Look for secret hatches, control panel lids or levers. There surely must be something like that here; the gates must be openable from outside.
After a while, Rick became very angry. They had examined everything they could reach but still found nothing similar to control panel or console.
“Maybe they do actually open them from inside?” Paul suggested bravely.
“No!”
“But we looked at everything. There are no levers or secret compartments here.”
“Look for them!”
“I think it would be better to walk along the rampart and look for another entrance or climb over it somehow...”
“Where? This is a rampart, it's an unbroken wall severa
l stories high! How are we going to climb it?”
Paul stared at the leaning mast with steel supports in the distance.
“Don't even think about it,” Rick cut him off. “We don't have any ropes that are long enough or any special hooks. The mast is way too far from the wall even if we manage to jump up high enough, and how would we get back down again?”
“You're right,” Paul nodded.
“We need to look for the gate control panel.”
“But there's nothing here.” Paul leaned on an oblong bulge that protruded from the gates.
Something clicked underneath the steel skin, there was a faint buzzing noise and a secret opening appeared. Paul fell inside as he could not keep his balance.
Rick grabbed his bag from the ground and jumped in after him, ready to use his weapon at any moment. But there was no need for that.
They found themselves in a cold rectangular hole. There was another pair of gates on the opposite size.
“It's an airlock,” Rick guessed.
“What's an...” Paul sneezed and wiped his nose with his sleeve.
Rick helped him get up and then walked towards the gates.
“An airlock is a special room which separates one inhabitable space from another, which is needed because...”
It was too late when he realized what was happening.
There was a familiar buzzing noise behind them and the opening that they used to enter the airlock quickly sealed itself with its hidden hatch.
“Go! You've still got time!”
“No!”
Paul stayed in his place. The thin sliver of light was consumed by the dark. There was a click. They were in impenetrable darkness.
Paul rummaged around in his pocket and took out a lighter. The flint was struck and a small fire lit the face of his companion.
“All right. Well done, Paul,” Rick patted him on the shoulder and walked over to the gates. “Let's think what we're going to do next.”
Something crunched under his feet. Rick stopped and crouched, felt around the floor with his hand and immediately stood back up. Paul still managed to notice the rictus grin of a skull and other human remains.