Last of the Treasure Hunters

by Warren Dean

  Okay, so Christina wasn't exactly normal, what with her being four hundred years old and all that, but her manner was warm and genuine. She could be tough too, as her past exploits demonstrated, and Azee could see why the Journeyman liked her so much.

  And Connor's irreverent sense of humour was gentle rather than an annoying. She could see why Christina liked him so much.

  The thing that spoiled the fun for her was the ever-present countdown in her mind. It would take about nine months for the drones to complete their mining operations on Mars. Then they would return to Earth.

  The problem was that half of the first month had gone by already, and all they seemed to have discovered was that the task laid out for them was well-nigh impossible. There was so much ground to cover, and all logical lines of enquiry had long ago been exhausted by the Journeyman in his millennia-long quest.

  There was a brief flurry of excitement when the Constructor found a way to extract the data in the little metal case NASA had sent along with the Nerds. He fed it into the Repository, and the Nerds trawled through it for a few days, contrasting NASA's observations with those of other civilisations that had explored the same areas of space.

  Azee invited Connor and Christina to join the sessions, and they followed the telepathic mindmeld as best they could.

  "--The resolution on that nebula is amazing…--"

  "--Is that the Horsehead…?--"

  "--Nope, looks like it's out towards the Pleiades…--"

  "--Who's playing with Deez…?--"

  "--How can you still not know the main clusters…?--"

  "--Could be the California Nebula…--"

  "--I would recognise a peanut-brittle cluster anywhere…--"

  "--That's the line the original Fersian migration took through the sector…--"

  "--How did they make it past that supernova…?--"

  "--They didn't…--"

  "--NASA recorded meteor showers in four locations along that vector…--"

  "--Where did the Fersians find enough propellant for their voyage…?--"

  "--Something big happened there…--

  "--Did any of the Constructors' deep-space probes go through the sector…?--"

  "--…a long time ago…--

  "--Who took down the Journeyman's overlay…?--"

  "--I moved it onto a secondary field…--"

  "--Nice of you to let us know…--"

  "--…otherwise we focus on it too much…--"

  "--That's a good idea…--"

  "--That's a stupid idea…--"

  "--The tracks of the Earth/Mars meteors look a bit like those ones…--"

  "--Maybe, but the probe found no trace of any metals…--"

  "--What did the Fersians use…?--"

  "--Some of it they synthesized…--"

  "--So, this is another dead end…--"

  "--There are no dead ends in space…--"

  "--There's one in the space on top of your neck…--"

  After one such session, Connor sat down with Azee. "I know I'm new to all this," he said, "but it feels like everything we're looking at has been dissected by the Constructors ages ago."

  Azee nodded sadly. "The trouble is that we're all new to this. The Repository is more advanced than any of us could possibly have imagined, and most of our time is spent learning how stuff works. At the rate we're going, we won't have scratched the surface before our nine months are up."

  "Nine months?"

  "According to the Journeyman, that's about how long it will take the drones to exhaust Mars' gold reserves."

  "Are those Earth months, or months on this planet? What is this planet called, anyway?"

  "This planet's orbit is similar to Earth's, so its days are about the same length. I don't know if it has a name. It was regarded as uninhabitable before the Constructors came here. We just call the whole thing the Repository."

  There was an uncomfortable silence as both of them contemplated Earth's impending doom. Connor changed the subject.

  "How is Ant doing? I've noticed that he doesn't join in the mindmelds much."

  "Oh, you know him, he's a loner at heart."

  "I know, but he used to be more fun. He seems a bit down to me."

  "I think it's because he can't find a way to hack the Repository. It isn't code based, you see, and he feels that his skills have let him down. I don't think that's ever happened to him before."

  "So, what's he been doing instead?"

  "He's hatched a plan is to manually map the voyages of the Constructors' deep-space probes. There are hundreds of thousands of those, so he can't possibly do them all, but he's started with those that came through the Milky Way. Then, by working outwards, he'll create an expanding chart of where the probes went and what they found."

  "That sounds like quite a good idea. If the source of the gold-bearing meteors is somewhere in our galactic vicinity, the map might give us a clue of where to look."

  "Yes, but the Constructors have conducted that type of exercise in the past and come up with nothing. And the Repository could do the whole thing for him in a fraction of the time if he told it to."

  "What do you think he hopes to achieve?"

  "He says the problem with the Repository is that it makes things too easy. Because almost every piece of information you want is instantly available, it all becomes meaningless after a while. He believes that it's like computer programming; if you want to really understand it, you have to go into the source code itself."

  "I guess that makes sense, but you think he's wasting his time?"

  "No… maybe… I don't really know anymore. Perhaps the rest of us are the ones who are wasting our time."

  "What does the Journeyman say?"

  "He hasn't said much at all. I expected a lot more guidance from him, but he seems to be wary of interfering with the way we do things. Or maybe he thinks we're in over our heads and not worth the effort."

  "Have you spoken to him about it?"

  "No, I haven't. But perhaps it's time I did."

  It took Azee a few days to raise the courage to broach the subject with the Journeyman. She tried speaking to him in passing a few times, but it felt like he was growing more and more remote. She began to wonder if he was regretting having brought the Nerds to the Repository.

  One morning, she resolved to stop stalling. She stayed in her sleeping pod as the other Nerds cleared out. Once she was alone, she got up, dressed, and went into the refectory for a quick bite to eat. She put a couple of pieces of toast on a plate and covered them in chocolate butter. She was about to sit down when a voice spoke from behind her.

  "Sleeping late, headmistress? You okay?"

  She started and spun around, sending one of the pieces of toast falling to the floor. It landed butter side down. The laws of sandwich physics were universal, it seemed.

  When she saw Ant slouched at a table in the corner, she grimaced. "Oh, it's you. Do you enjoy giving people a fright?" She picked up the fallen toast and plopped it back on her plate.

  "Didn't mean to; thought you would see me, but you were in your own world."

  Azee didn't feel like talking to anyone, but she didn't dislike the hacker and he looked a little lost sitting by himself without so much as a laptop for company. So she joined him, putting her plate down on his table and sitting in the chair opposite him. "Something on your mind?" she asked.

  "I was going to ask you the same thing," he responded.

  She sighed. "I was just wondering whether we're any use to the Journeyman."

  "Having doubts?" he said, raising an eyebrow. "That's not like you."

  "I'm not sure about that anymore." She tried to remember which piece of toast had fallen on the floor, but for once her memory failed her. She decided that she didn't care and picked up one at random.

  "It isn't your responsibility," said Ant.

  "What isn't?"

  "Earth. You're just a kid."

  She scowled, and he raised his hands in a placatory gesture
.

  "Easy, I'm not saying you're immature, just young. It's not a crime, you know, being young and unable to save a planet from its own stupidity."

  "It's the people on it that are stupid, not the planet itself," she muttered.

  "That's true, but there are good people among the bad."

  "I guess so." She ate a bit more toast. "What about you? Why are you moping around by yourself?"

  "I'm not moping, I'm thinking."

  "About what?"

  "About something I noticed yesterday. I'm trying to work out if it means anything."

  "So… are you going to tell me about it, or what?"

  "Seeing as you ask so nicely, I will. I started mapping the voyages of the…"

  "The deep-space probes, yes I know, you told me."

  "Right, but then I realised I was barking up the wrong celestial tree. Most of the data logged by the probes has nothing to do with gold and I realised that I was wasting a lot of time going through it. It's actually the survey drones which focus on where gold was found and it makes more sense to map their voyages rather than those of the probes."

  "Sounds logical," she said, "but the Constructors must have done that too, and studied every detail. Do you think they might have missed something?"

  "No, not really, I'm just trying to look at it from a different perspective – a human perspective. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing?"

  "I suppose so," she said uncertainly, her doubts on that score resurfacing.

  "Anyway," he continued, "those survey drones are tough cookies. They go on missions that last hundreds of years. They're made of a substance that repairs itself as needed, and they return to base only when something goes seriously wrong. Their survey results are transmitted back to the Constructors through fold-space, although they always leave a physical copy behind in case something interferes with the transmission."

  "Ant, I know all of this."

  "Sure, but here's the funny part. One of the first drones I looked at was the one that came through the Milky Way and surveyed Earth and Mars. Its voyages were very interesting, I can tell you, but the weirdest thing is that this particular drone disappeared for nearly five hundred years.

  "What do you mean, it disappeared?"

  "It disappeared from record. No survey results were received from it in that time, it didn't report in for any repairs, and there is a five hundred year gap in its log," he replied. "The Constructors last received a transmission from it in 327 AD, our time. That's about nine hundred years after it visited Earth. It sent back a survey of a little desert planet where gold deposits were found embedded in a bunch of crystal towers. Then nothing was heard from it until around 819 AD, when the Constructors picked up its distress signal. They recovered it, badly damaged but intact. The last thing recorded in its log was of being caught in the gravity field of a black hole. After that, the log was blank."

  "It went into a black hole and survived? I thought that was impossible?"

  "It is. According to the Repository, nothing can escape a black hole. And yet, if the drone's log is correct, it went in and somehow came back out again. Whether it spent the missing time within the black hole or floating around in normal space is unknown."

  "That's extraordinary," she said. "Were the Constructors able to find out what happened to it?"

  "Not as far as I could see. They tried to recover the missing part of its log, but there was nothing there. The drone was subjected to every diagnostic test available at the time, but they found nothing unusual. Then they decommissioned it and replaced it with a newer drone."

  "I'll admit that's a very strange story, Ant, but what makes you think it's important?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know whether it's important or not; that's why I'm thinking about it. It just seems an odd coincidence that the very drone that surveyed Earth turns out to have achieved something that is generally regarded as impossible."

  He lapsed into silence and she excused herself. As interesting as her conversation with Ant was, she hadn't forgotten that she was supposed to be bearding the Journeyman in his den. Walking out of the refectory, she realised that she didn't know where his private chambers were. Other than the roof, the Nerds' living quarters, and the 'hive complex, she didn't know much about the physical layout of the Repository at all. Perhaps that was another omission she ought to remedy.

  She stood in the corridor and sent out a telepathic call.

  MEANWHILE…

  The Journeyman was in something of a quandary. He wasn't surprised that it was taking time for the Nerds to get to grips with the complexities of the Repository. They were young after all, even by human standards, and it was unrealistic to expect them to adopt the sophisticated methodology a Constructor would. And that was not what he wanted from them anyway.

  He had brought them from Earth to see whether their intuitive thought processes could help him bring a less conventional approach to his own research. He had no illusions about them actually solving the mystery of where the ancient meteors had sprung from. That was his task, and he couldn't naively count on them to stumble across the solution and solve all of his problems.

  What he hadn't accounted for was that, although they had a great deal of raw talent, they were extremely unsophisticated. They were uncontrolled and easily distracted. They acted like they didn't have a care, even though their own world faced imminent disaster. And they were always so hungry. For such flimsy little beings, their capacity for consuming large quantities of nourishment was remarkable.

  They needed guidance, but he was concerned that any attempt to point them in what he considered to be the right direction would be counterproductive. He did not want their natural talents to be subsumed into that of just another research team. But if he didn't intervene, and soon, their efforts would continue to go to waste, and he would be no nearer the resolution he sought.

  Azee's call was a welcome interjection. Of all of the younglings, she was the one who impressed him the most. Her ability to process and memorise information exceeded that of any other student he had ever encountered. Having been alone with his concerns for so long, it was refreshing to be in close proximity to another who shared his love of information. Whatever happened on Earth, he hoped that she could be persuaded to commit herself to a course of study at the Repository, safe from the uncertain fate of her home planet.

  He answered, and directed her to a portal she hadn't used before, one which would take her down into the City of Shapes. He met her beneath a gigantic rhomboid in the lee of one of the wind farms, and took her on an impromptu tour of the lower city.

  From the way she was screwing up her face and trying to shade her eyes with her hand, he realised that the light cascading through the transparent structures was too bright for her. So he stepped into an alcove and used the applicator there, producing a moulded strip of shaded gel that she could fit over her eyes. She accepted it gratefully, and they continued on.

  "Is this where you work most of the time?" she asked him eventually.

  "No, I usually access information through the 'hive," he replied, "but since you younglings arrived, I have been reacquainting myself with some of the older interfaces."

  "Oh dear," she said. "I hope you're not avoiding the 'hive because of us. I know we're annoying, but you should really just ignore us."

  "That is not the reason, I assure you. I find your interaction with each other quite fascinating."

  She cringed. "So you do listen to us."

  "From time to time, yes."

  "Look, the way they speak, they don't mean to be so rude… er, well actually they do, but it's not supposed to be taken seriously. They think they're being funny. I hope you understand."

  "Do not be concerned, I am not so easily offended," he replied, guiding her towards another alcove. This one had some large Constructor-sized seats arranged around the edge of a raised pool filled with a dark gelatinous substance. The seats were so high off the ground that she had to cling to one of his arms so
that he could lift her up onto one of them. He took a seat next to hers and then plunged his arms into the substance. She followed suit, and he saw the wonder come over her face as the schematics, functions, and controls of the entire City of Shapes opened up in her mind.

  Establishing a mindmeld with her, he observed quietly as she began racing through the information, quickly identifying its overall structure so that it would be easier to memorise. It was an ingrained reaction that she was almost unaware of. He let her carry on for a few minutes, impressed anew by her ability, but then gently prompted her to withdraw her arms from the interface. They did so together, the substance remaining behind in the pool so that their arms were completely dry when they were retracted.

  "There are many sensory points such as these throughout the Repository," he said. "They were used regularly when there were more of my people here. We worked as a team, with members stationed at various points communicating with each other in mindmeld. But as our numbers dwindled, it became harder to co-ordinate our research as there were not enough of us to populate all of the key points. There were too many interruptions as members travelled from one to another, and our work became disjointed.

  "So, over time, I built the 'hive, gradually integrating all of the sensory points into one construct. Now, although I am the last one here, I can continue the work as before."

  She drew in a nervous breath. "Erm, that is kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," she said. "I can't help wondering what good we're doing here. It feels like we're floundering, getting in your way. If you would rather send us back, I won't blame you."

  "Is that what you want?" he asked. "I hope you know that you are not here against your will. If you request it, I will return you to your home planet, or provide for you elsewhere in the Thousand Systems if you would prefer. If you are concerned about repercussions, I cannot guarantee that the elder Constructors won't immediately send the drones back to Earth. It is unlikely, however. It would be impractical for them to interrupt mining operations on the red planet before they have been completed."