“Leaving so soon, Mistress Borgolov?”
She drew herself up and studied him from black hat brim to scuffed shoe-toes. “I do not believe I have the pleasure of your acquaintance.” He extended his hand and a wave of //flowers/rude/very happy/subordinate// from his perfume came with it. “And I fear you do not have mine. Good day, sir.” A space opened in the flow of transports and carts, and she walked with steady, firm steps across the street, then proceeded on, ignoring him. Cutting him was rude, a little voice reminded her. Presuming to know her and acting so familiar was even ruder, she told the voice. And although Shikhari was not Home or LimWorld, bag-lifters still existed. She waited until she’d covered half a kilometer before glancing behind, and did not see him.
Rigi reached the first market as Shona finished his shopping. He used a pull-cart, hooked to a sort of harness-like garment that he wore in place of a waistcoat. Rigi waited until he approached her, then joined him, walking between him and the buildings. The first time she’d seen the pull-carts, she’d wondered about the odd design, with rigid arms with hooks that fit into large rings on the harness. A lid covered the pull-cart’s contents, and most pull-carts had large, soft tires on the wheels. If you looked closely, or turned one over, you could see thick pads between the axel and the frame. None of it made sense until Rigi had been walking home from school with Mar and they stumbled upon a fight. A young third Stamm male had challenged an older male, insulting him, or so Rigi guessed. She’d missed that part. What had impressed her, before Mar had grabbed her, all but stuffing Rigi into her pouch and bounding off, was how fast the older male moved. He’d jumped straight up, leaving the cart behind, then jumped forward and attacked the younger male, forefoot claws slashing. Fur had flown and Rigi thought she recalled seeing blood before Mar had covered her eyes with one forefoot and pulled her out of the way, then rushed home. When a Staré jumped, it lifted the harness-rings clear of the hooks on the arms, releasing the user to run or whatever. The pads served as shock absorbers if someone had to hop-walk while pulling the cart.
Shona had never jumped, not that Rigi observed. He did not speak as they walked, and neither did she. Instead she watched their surroundings and smelled the area, fixing landmarks in her mind. After a half kilometer they reached a transport stand and Shona raised a forefoot, calling a passenger wombow cart. A bright red one trundled up to meet them. Shona expressed a whiff of //concern// and asked, “Does this fit, Miss Rigi?”
He was asking it it was suitable for her, she realized. “Yes, Shona, this is good.” It had seats for humans and Staré, and the light grey fifth Stamm driver opened the door and offered her his gloved forefoot as she climbed in. Shona and the driver lifted the pull cart into the very back of the vehicle, and Shona rode between it and Rigi’s section. The driver climbed up to his seat and made a trilling sound. Two young wombows hurried forward, almost a trot, and they returned to the house in good time. Rigi had sorted out the cost and passed the coins to Shona, who tucked them into his belt-envelope. As the driver handed her down from the seat, she slipped two more coins between his forefoot toes as a tip. Shona paid him the fare after he helped with the pull cart, and the driver bowed low, opening the gate for them before leaving.
Rigi followed Shona around to the rear of the house. They entered by the verandah, then the coat and shoe room. Shona cleaned his feet while Rigi changed into house shoes and left her coat to dry. The little rain had begun once more. “Once all is finished, I would like tea, please. In the family room.”
“It shall be, Miss Rigi.” She left him and started toward her room, then stopped as she saw Lonka coming out of the hallway to the master bedroom, carrying a tray with tea and the remains of dry toasts. She stepped aside, out of his way, and his ears bent forward in a form of bow.
“Thank you, Miss Rigi.” He stopped as well. “Was your journey empty of events?”
“Yes, thank you, Lonka. It was uneventful.” She wouldn’t mention the forward young man or the meeting in the park. Lonka had a possessive streak, as she’d discovered, and she did not want him upset.
“It is good to hear.” She continued on her way and he went his.
Later that afternoon she finished the first of the color plates for Aunt Kay. Rigi stretched, paced back and forth, and pulled out the wombow cart sketch. She made a few notes about color and size, then decided that she and Martinus needed to get out.
Pit pit patter patter patterpatterpatterpatter gush patterpatterpatter.
Or perhaps not. The rain had begun as she worked, and seemed intent on dousing the world. She looked outside and saw a grumpy looking Staré, ears going different directions, squelching up the front walk. He wore a water proof cloak with a hood that covered his head but kept his ears free. He seemed to be carrying something, and as she peered through the water-wavy glass, Rigi saw a motor transport idling in the road. A special delivery of some kind, then.
Oh well. She sat down at the comm terminal and looked at her messages, including several invitations to social events. Those she forwarded to her mother. Rigi could recall most of the people she needed to meet and who had what position in society, but a few unfamiliar names gave her pause. She’d forgotten about the other aspect of the cool season in Keralita. Because people from both the capital at NovMerv and from Sogdia came to Keralita, once the first heavy rains dwindled, the cool served as the social season, especially for families with marriageable sons and daughters. Now that her sister had married, Rigi needed to find a spouse. She wanted to be wed, but not tomorrow, thank you. “Well, sixteen is too young, even though I’ve graduated. Eighteen is the minimum.” She could watch and participate but not worry about finding herself engaged by accident, as had been known to happen. “Speaking of accidents, I’d best see what that holo-card has on it.”
Rigi read the first two pages of the compressed pamphlet before laughing so hard that she had tears in her eyes. She wiped them with the hem of her skirt and closed the document. The supposed picture of the kneeling Staré in chains, with the caption “Let my people go” was really too much. No one owned Staré—there were laws against that exact sort of thing as well as a company representative whose job was to ensure that all work contracts were fair and legal and that no one tried to use debt to trick a Staré. To make matters worse, Staré anatomy prevented them from kneeling like that! At first Rigi was not certain if she should be angry at the foolishness, or laugh at it. Laughter won.
That evening she mentioned the encounters to her parents. “Perhaps I should not have been so abrupt, sir, ma’am, but he was the young man who stared at us in the luggage and cargo building, and he did press himself on me after I said that I did not know him.”
Her mother worked on an embroidery piece, fingers moving as she spoke. “If you had been with a suitable escort, then I would scold you for being so blunt, Auriga. But since you were alone and he came out of the crowd and put himself forward, blunt is best.”
“Did he look new, Rigi?” her father asked, brown eyebrows drawn down a touch in a near frown.
She thought. “Yes, sir, but not fresh-from-Home new. He wore dark colors, close fitted but not truly tight. And he has been here as long as we have, five weeks, and should know not to presume with unfamiliar ladies.”
“Yes, he should,” her father said, advancing the screen on the file he was reading. “I’ll ask tomorrow, see if anyone knows to whom he belongs. I will return to Sogdia in three days, and I’d just as soon not leave this for your mother and Lonka to deal with.” He looked to the side, thinking. “In fact, I’ll have a quiet word with Alfonse so he can let the bachelor crowd know that you are not on the market yet.”
“Timothy, please. That is not the way to refer to your daughter and marriage.” Rigi’s mother gave him a look Rigi didn’t recognize, and her father seemed, not exactly puzzled, but slightly confused? No, something else, but Rigi did not have the right word just then. Her mother continued, “But that will help prevent unfortunate misunderstandings. T
hank you.”
Two days later the rain eased enough and the ground dried sufficiently for Rigi and Martinus to go to the Stela Site. Her mother had been queasy the past three mornings, making her snappish, and Rigi wanted to be out in the fresh air and quiet. She carried her own beam-shooter in her satchel and Martinus paced beside her as they walked through the woods into the true forest. Six years. She could not quite believe that it had been six years since Tomás had found the ruins, had invited her to come see, and they had brought Uncle Eb. The faint trail gave way to a dirt track, and a signpost pointed to the site. Professional xenoarchaeologists, sponsored by the Crown, had taken over from Uncle Eb and Mr. De Groet. They’d organized and tidied the site so ordinary people could walk through on occasion, or so Uncle Eb had told her. She found the first sign outside the gate. Instead of brush and a half-hollow tree, a young man sat under a rain-shed outside the remains of the wall. “May I help you, miss?”
“I’m Auriga Bernardi, and I have a pass.” She handed him her identity card and her pass, signed by Dr. Xian herself.
His eyes went wide and he knocked over his stool as he got to his feet, handing back her cards and saluting her. “Oh, welcome! It is an honor to meet you, ma’am, a true honor. Dr. Xian will be pleased to know that you came by. Shall I call her, ma’am?”
“No, thank you, sir.” Rigi smiled, embarrassed by the hero-worship. “I am just another visitor today, not here on business.” Not entirely true, but very close.
“It is my honor, ma’am, and please let me know if I can assist in any way.” He lifted the small token bar across the path, and Rigi and Martinus walked into the site. Once through the reconstructed gate, Rigi stopped, taking her sketchpad and pencil out of her satchel and telling Martinus to be at ease. Instead of the overgrown tree and brush filled area of her memories, she saw a neatly grassed and marked field with small stone walls revealing where buildings had been located. The wall that she had first seen covered in racer vines now extended without interruption as far as she could trace. The archaeologists had preserved it as was instead of trying to reconstruct it as they had the carved gate. The gate stood proud of the wall, white and grey stone pillars rising against the pitted black of the wall.
Rigi and Martinus walked on until they reached the name stone, as she and Tomás had called the stela. “Wooeef!” She spun around. A man seemed to be running toward them, and without thinking she put her free hand down, ready to open the panel and draw if needed. “Wooeef!” The man slowed and stopped, keeping his hands in the open. She relaxed.
“Miss, please do not touch the stela,” he called. “It is quite fragile.”
Rigi looked from the carved stone to the man, back to the stone, and back to the man once more. “Indeed? How curious. When Mister Prananda and I found it, it was quite sturdy, just like the materials in the quarry fifteen kilometers to the north, from where it was cut.”
The man blinked, and as Rigi watched he made the connections. “Miss Bernardi?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, your pardon, ma’am.” He came closer and she saw that he had a nametag on and wore very sturdy, hard-wearing clothes. “I’m Dr. Rajiv Sanchez. Acting director of excavations here, and at Plains Site Four, the two active excavations at present. I apologize. We’ve had some visitors from the inner worlds who really should not be allowed off paved surfaces.” His round face reminded Rigi of someone, but she wasn’t certain whom. He sounded irritated and apologetic both.
She decided to be diplomatic. “I quite understand, Dr. Sanchez. I prefer not to wear a sign or to begin by announcing that I’m that Auriga Bernardi.”
He caught the indirect introduction and bowed a little. “Please be welcome, Miss Bernardi. Is there anything in particular you would like to see? All the buildings are open today.”
Rigi smiled. “Nothing in particular, thank you, sir. I’ll just meander, provided I won’t be underfoot.”
“Oh no, Miss Bernardi, not underfoot at all. We’re not resuming work until tomorrow, and that depends on the rain. We can travel the stars but not predict the weather.” He sighed, a gust of sound.
“Quite true, Dr. Sanchez. Thank you.” He went back to what he had been doing, and Rigi decided to start at the temple. She and Tomás had not seen it since the preservationists had finished work, and she and Martinus walked that way. She approved of the paths and the small signs. Someone had used rocks to recreate the walls of the buildings to knee height, and she marveled again at what had been hidden for so long. The Stela Site was nothing less than a small city, although what it did no one could say. They’d found almost no artifacts, no signs of daily life among the people who had lived here, be they Staré or a different, lost species. She and Tomás assumed they had been Staré, based on tales they’d heard of the coming of the second world, the current world. Martinus’s head turned left and right as his visual sensors swept the area for danger. Rigi didn’t think they’d find anything, but then they’d not been expecting the giant lizard, or the striped lion, or the carnifex leaper, or the hunter lizard, or…
She stopped several times to sketch things as they were. Despite her training she still preferred the ancient tools of paper and pencil to electronic pads for the initial, basic drawings. E-pads required thought, while pencil and paper took the image from mind and hand without any in-between step.
A motion detector turned on soft lights as she paused at the threshold of the building that she and Tomás had called the temple. “Oh,” she breathed, eyes wide. “Sit, Martinus, stay.” She left him at the door and walked in, staring up at the frieze and paintings, their colors singing and still bright after a thousand years. In some places the black scorch-like material remained, hiding the decorations, but elsewhere wombeasts, Staré-like figures, terror birds, and others danced, paid homage to a strange figure of a Staré with the head of a horn-nosed digger. A few figures pointed to a round shape like the city itself but seen from above. The horn-nose-headed figure in turn pointed toward a long, dark creature that proved to be an enormous hunter-lizard, the only dull-colored thing in the room, matte grey-green aside from the crimson on its teeth and claws. Rigi saw what might have been bodies under those talons, but preserved soot obscured the shapes.
Rigi drew some of the frieze, amused once more by the row of wombeasts that formed the lowest row. They seemed to be eating flowers, or smelling flowers, while their founded backs held up a bright blue and black stripe. Terror-birds with crimson and lemon and orange plumage, walked on the stripe. As Rigi moved around the room, the figures seemed to move as well, walking or dancing, and she wondered how the long-gone artists had managed it. Her sketches couldn’t catch the motion, and she felt a little sorry for her lack of skill. She made notes about colors and patterns, and blinked at the Staré that seemed to be wearing fancy clothes, embroidered modesty aprons and pouch drapes, striped vests with tall collars, and even flowers or jewelry clipped to their ears. Or were the ears pierced? She got as close as she could, but the picture didn’t tell her. In fact, as she looked, every creature with external ears had something on them. “But Staré don’t pierce their ears.”
Rigi spent half an hour in the temple. Only then did she go back outside and read the data holo about the building, now prosaically labeled “The Painted Building.” The paintings dated to a thousand years ago, according to chemical tests of the bits of paint that had flaked off. All the colors were original and had been carefully treated with a preservative to allow visitors without risking damage because of the lights and the people breathing in the space. The black indeed was soot of some kind, but no one knew the cause or what caused the damage to the exterior, the apparent melting. Nor did the xenoarchaeologists venture to speculate about what the building’s original purpose might have been.
Rigi visited the Residency, and smiled to see a note that “the discoverers named this ‘The Residency’, a name that remains in use although there is no evidence of governmental function.” Again, no hint of what had caused
the destruction or why, although the holo-panel explained that all the buildings had been damaged at the same time, or within so short a space of time that the sequence could not be determined. The shiny black had begun as a decorative coating, or so it seemed, that had been bonded to the buildings by extreme heat. The pitting and wear in the black had come while it was molten, a thought that give Rigi pause. What had blown up that could melt and fuse rock? The Staré had neither fusion nor fission technology when humans first encountered them a century ago, nor electricity. And none of the signs explained why the residents had left no possessions, or where their food had come from.
Rigi did a quick drawing of the stabilized and protected Residency walls. She’d just finished and was sharpening her pencil again when Martinus beeped and went on alert. His eyes scanned more quickly, his tail went level with his back, and he crouched. Rigi half-opened the flap on her satchel, listening as she turned on her toes, watching for motion.
Too close to the wall! The memory of the carnifex-leaper’s attack struck full force. “Come,” she snapped, walking away from the building and into the open. The Residency no longer had a roof for things to hide on, but that didn’t matter, not as she saw again the red-brown predator in mid-leap, lower jaw unhinged, claws extended. Martinus paced beside her, head moving, looking for danger just as she did. She stopped, listening hard. A leaf fell, and she heard a bird trilling far in the distance, and her heart’s thumping. “Locate source.”
He scanned, then changed ends and led her to the west side of the building. She exhaled through pursed lips as she looked at the tracks in the light-brown soil. Something large, without a grasping thumb claw. Surely not a hunter lizard, no, not here where there was not a cover pit to attack from. Rigi sketched the tracks and followed them to where the disappeared on harder ground. The tracks did not appear fresh, perhaps a day old? Rigi made a note and put her tools away. That was enough. She needed to go home. Her hands had begun shaking just a little as she glanced at the furry tail covering Martinus’s metal tail rod.
Staré: Shikari Book Two Page 4