by Larry Niven
I had no idea what he meant, except that he was planning to use the discs. How he knew which ones to use I had no idea.
The crew slowly went back to the tower and up the ramp to the third level, passing the second level where I had been learning so much. I suppose Bengar had done much the same as me, during his long time of solitude, and he had learned how to use the discs; maybe he had found out how to read the writing on them.
The crew went first, and Silver and I followed them. I was apprehensive; I feared that Silver knew something I did not, and the possibility he knew where my friends were was frightening. I hoped they kept a good guard, but they might easily assume that nobody could follow them by means of the discs, and Silver seemed to think he could.
We climbed up the ramp and they milled about on the third level, unsure where to go next. Silver calmly took his phone out of a pouch and pointed it at the wall.
“I knew that the ghost o’ K’zarr were an artifact, d’ye see, and I knew that there was someone about the place what could travel betwixt the towers. And it had to be by means of the discs, did it not? And the on’y question was, which one. So I put a few little spy cameras where they would be inconspicuous, but keep watch for me. And there ye see it, young Marthar herself, as I suspected.” He turned his phone so they could see what he was watching as he downloaded history from the spycam. I craned around and saw a tiny Marthar prowl confidently into the second room. The crew cheered, they would never have thought to do anything like this, and their confidence in Silver seemed to have been restored.
“And now we need to see what the camera in this room saw a little later,” Silver said confidently, and pointed his phone just inside the open doorway, on the wall. I could see nothing, but spycams were tiny. You could find them electronically with a scanner, but searching by eye was a waste of time unless you had years in which to do it and a powerful microscope. Again, Silver turned his camera in triumph towards the crew, so they could see the diminutive Marthar step confidently onto one of the discs towards the back and vanish. The crew cheered and rushed towards the disc. My stomach churned.
“Belay that, me hearties, we need a little care. Who knows what we may find on t’other side? Best go armed and go careful, I says. Me and the monkey goes first, and then ye follow, wi’ yer wtsais at the ready. I misdoubts we can go more than one at a time, but follow me briskly arter a count o’ five pulse beats atween ye.”
Which would give him time to kill them all one by one if he so chose. But I knew Silver would do no such thing until it was clear that he had no choice. And then he would dispose of the rest of the pirates without thinking twice about it.
Silver shouldered his way through them, picking me up with no trace of effort. “Back, messmates, and do not step on the wrong disc, or we’ll never see ye again.” The pirates looked at their feet cautiously. Then with me over his shoulder, Silver stepped directly on to the disc that Marthar had travelled by, holding me casually with one arm, the other holding the great cutlass he had drawn and ready. The helmet I had worn was dangling around his neck, held by the snakes, which he had tied into a bow.
We came into a world at sunset; it was cold and getting darker. Some of the brighter stars were shining in the sky, visible through one of the huge windows. I had never been here before, and I prayed that it was a waystation and that Marthar had long gone where Silver couldn’t find her. Silver looked around, grunted, stepped off the disc and put me down carefully. He picked his way towards the door, and I followed him. I turned at a slight movement from the corner of my eye, and the kzin with the bandage was standing on the disc. He stepped off and followed us towards the doorway. We trooped down the ramp, passing the second floor, which presumably held rooms of alien bookreaders, the others following us slowly. Silver led us all out to look at the word over the arch. I stared, but in the failing light it was impossible to read. This one seemed to have weathered more. It looked older, though possibly less damaged at the top than the first tower.
“Can’t make it out at all,” Silver said. “I thinks we’re going to have to go inside and find out what’s in this tower, and Peter, ’tes as well I bought that helmet, for ye may have t’ help us here.”
“Look, Cap’n, there’s another tower o’er yonder.” One of the crew pointed and, sure enough, another tower loomed high against the darkling sky. It was many miles off, its base lost in vegetation, which seemed thicker and darker here. The ground was less red, but just as untouched by man or anything that might have grown crops deliberately. Silver took his phone, squinted at it and took a picture of the faint markings. Then he set the phone to clean up the image and emphasize the script. Then he held it out to me, and I looked at the word. It was just possible to see it now. I checked through my dictionary. It wasn’t there, and I said so. He just nodded thoughtfully.
We went back into the tower, and up the ramp, the crew going first, me next and Silver at the end. He had sheathed his cutlass, as the crew had their wtsais. There was no threat that a weapon would save us from. I shivered.
Upstairs, the second floor was much like the first tower: there were tables and seats like saddles on horizontal poles, and more helmets, these of a different style. They were more like crowns, and the snakes conspicuously absent. They hummed faintly when Silver picked one up for a closer inspection.
“I thinks we’ll stay wi’ what we have, Peter. Here’s a metal bar, one o’ they heathen books. Sit ye down again and have a look at it. Wi’ luck, it’s a treatise on how to make those black discs, for we’d have trillions could we set someone to making them.” He spoke to reassure the crew, and perhaps himself. I knew the odds against the first book tried being anything useful in the short term were millions to one.
I sat down at the table. Silver took a bar at random and set it down and connected the cables as I slipped on the hemet. I got the usual starting sequence and a set of icons, most of which were the same. When the title came up, I recognized the word I had just seen on Silver’s phone, which saved me having to try to draw it. I focused on it and isolated it and turned it into an icon. Then I had to analyze it into components and examples. I studied the examples for a long time, trying to work out what they had in common. They all had some sort of things in swirling motion, some of them loose-robed living things, some like suits of armor with rings of silver assembled into tubes that bifurcated and bifurcated again. And they all moved, sometimes in a stately pageant, sometimes stamping and getting sparks, sometimes in a sort of conga line of interweaving threads made up of what might have been intelligent beings or programmed machines. I sat back. I suppose I knew roughly what these things were doing, and hence what the word meant. Silver wasn’t going to like it, and the crew would like it a lot less.
I now knew how to advance the time on the thing. No doubt it had some sort of search function, but I didn’t know how to use it. So I went about a quarter of the way through and looked at the video. There was some of the strange music, and figures gliding through a snow-storm. I jumped forward to halfway through and saw black shapes like canines baying at the moon and jumping into the air as if trying to devour it or catch non-existent frisbees. And finally I fast-forwarded to just before the end. There was a chain of tall figures, etiolated giants, in a long line running in parallel across a featureless plain. And behind them another, running and half-kneeling at the same time. I exited the helmet, removed it from my head and looked around at the expectant faces.
“I found the word on the front of this tower, and I ploughed into examples. Then I watched some of what is on this bar, and it confirmed what I had thought, pretty much. This tower contains records of examples of dance. There are lots of different things dancing, but that’s what it is.”
Silver sagged. The others looked murderous.
“I thinks I’d like to see this for meself, young Peter. Not that I think ye’d lie to me, not successfully. But I believe in seeing for meself where possible. Now give me the helmet and tell me what needs to be d
one to use it to see the contents o’ the book.” Silver had said he didn’t trust the world about him not to take advantage if he were absorbed under the helmet, and I suspected that the crew might take the chance to slice his head off with his own cutlass, but they stood about and watched him carefully as he disappeared into the device. He spoke, his voice clear enough, asking for instructions. I told him to wait for the icons to appear, then to look for the one that resembled a golden bar held horizontally. There was, at the extreme right of it, a vertical black thread, I shouted at him with his ears covered by the helmet. If he focused on the thread and moved it to the right, he would do a fast-forward to that location. I waited for some minutes, and the crew waited with me.
“Aye, right,” Silver’s voice came again. “Now tell me how to get this thing off of me, for it’s grown tight on m’ head.”
I told him about the eject icon, and a moment later he took the helmet off.
“Well, very interestin; very interestin’ indeed. I think ye ha’ the right of it. ’Tes about them animules, prancin’ around, wastin’ their time and ours.”
The crew growled again. “So another waste, Silver. Another step towards nothin’, or nothin’ what any sane beast would waste time on. When are we goin’ to get some treasure, instead o’ this here faffle? Dancin’ is for kits again.”
“Ye have a point, Tar-Marrak, ye have indeed. So we have to try again, so we do.”
“And this time ye have no idea which disc the kit used to get from here, for ’tes clear she just passed through, and so we are lost, Silver!”
“Well, we have several options, my fine fellows. Not good ones, no, I’ll grant ye that. But we ain’t done yet, no we ain’t. I says we have another tower not too far away, and I says we tries for that before the night falls. For when it falls, ’twill be a long time before sunrise, I’m thinkin’, and I’d like to be away before then, d’y see. For it be a long, cold night acomin’, and ye may lay to that.”
They growled at the backs of their throats, but none could meet Silver’s steady eye. I looked at him and noticed something different about his appearance, which had troubled me a little before, without my seeing what it truly was. Naturally, Silver had a white bib like an orca, silver against the mahogany fur, but he had dyed it. Now it was starting to grow out. And the other fur on his belly and shoulders was also growing out, he had dyed that too. Underneath, it was red. Blazons of red fur were, not always, but often, a mark of the Riit Clan.
So began the long trek. We were headed into the gloom of approaching night, which didn’t make for optimism or cheer. Silver had to carry me on his shoulder, or I would have held everyone up. As it was, we slowly fell behind the seven pirates, who grumbled all the time, but so low we couldn’t hear the words. The terrain was rocky and gray in the red of the slowly setting sun.
“Peter, I have t’ ask somethin’ of ye, to spare your life an’ mine.” Silver whispered to me, easy enough since my head was close to his.
“Yes?” I asked cautiously.
“Well, ’tes like this. I reckons the chances that we shall find anythin’ useful in this third tower t’ be rather poor. Likely we shall find ’tes full o’ poetry or history or some such useless rubbish. An’ if so then they will run out o’ patience, I’m thinkin’. So it would be as well if ye were t’ gi’ them a little hope, d’ye see. Gammon them along a little, that is what I asks o’ ye. ’Twill add a few hours to our lives, I’m thinkin’.”
“What use will that be?” I asked, scornfully. “A few hours for a lie? Better to die with honor.”
“Ah, well, ye may take it so, but much may happen in a few hours. Who is t’ tell? Mayhap your friends may catch up wi’ us by then and take a part. Wouldn’t ye prefer t’ live and play wi’ your little kzinrett friend again? And there be little dishonor in gammoning such fools as these, ye might think of it as a war stratagem, lettin’ the enemy deceive hisself, a mere tactic t’use agin scum what would kill out o’ rage rather than for advantage.”
Silver wheedled well. And revealed himself in the process, I thought. If you were at war with the whole world, then lying and deceiving was just a tactic, to be used judiciously. Most kzin would be fooled by it, because most kzin disdained to lie, which made them all the more vulnerable to someone who didn’t share that value.
“What makes you think they’d trust me?” I asked. Kzin knew well enough that most human beings had a rather lesser sense of honor, and they despised us for it. I was inclined to agree with them, but then I had been brought up with Marthar, who was of the Riit. And she, I knew, would despise someone who lied to gain advantage, even when their life was at stake.
“Ah, that be a difficulty, I grants ye. But ye have spoken up wi’ a rare sperrit in the past, d’ye see. A good tactic that, for it causes people t’ trust ye.”
I was disgusted with Silver and told him so. “I don’t tell the truth so that people will trust me. I tell it so as to keep my own self-respect.”
Silver sighed. “Ah well, there’s different styles o’ self-respect, d’ye see? No, I don’t suppose ye do. Ye’re young, and ye thinks ye has the world sorted out, and that there be sich things as justice and fairness in the universe. Well, ivery bit o’ justice ye find in this world has been put there by some strong being who could impose it by force against th’ inclinations of weaker ones wi’ more use for mercy than justice. The universe itself has no use whatever for either o’ they things. ’Tes a war, Peter, a war wi’ intelligence on one side and a cold, indifferent universe on t’other. And ’tes survival is what counts. And in the end we all loses, so we does. At the end o’ things, we’re all i’ the way to study a long silence. But I’ll fight for as long as I can, I’ll not go easy into the long night. An’ ye may lay to that.”
“You’ll betray any principle to save your worthless life?”
“Oh, aye, indeed I will,” he said comfortably. “For ’tain’t worthless to me, d’ye see? For without it, there ain’t a me t’ consider the matter. And what’s a principle that ye should be so fond o’ them? ’Tes no more than some rule the rest o’ the world would ha’ ye follow, for their benefit, not yourn. What’s honor? A puff of air. Who hath it? He that died a week ago. What did it profit him? Not a dot. He lies cold, whether he hath it or no.”
“At least he died for what he believed in,” I said grimly.
“Maybe. Or maybe for what someone else believed in and cozened him into,” Silver said wearily. “Me, I believes in not dyin’.”
We loped on in silence after that. Silver had a slight wobble in his artificial leg, and we were slowly falling behind, but every so often the crew would pause for us to catch up. They didn’t greatly trust their leader. No more did I, and with reason. If handing me over would prolong his life a few minutes, no doubt he’d do it. When we were close enough to speak easily, Silver would wave his cutlass cheerily and urge them on again, speaking as to friends and colleagues despite their grim looks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It took an age, but eventually we stood outside the third tower, the light eldritch and withered. The sun had set, and there were stars in the eastern sky. The world had no single moon, but it had a faint ring of rubble, a million tiny moonlets, which made a faint haze against the blackness. It was still too light to see the purple nebulae, but we could see the brighter stars in it. In another day or two of shiptime, it would no doubt be dark enough for the nebulae to be visible. It was cold, and I shivered.
The archway was a great dark hole and the space above it almost as black, and there was no sign of the writing I had hoped for.
“A little dark for clear vision, let’s see if a phone will help again,” Silver said, and he pointed his phone at the dark space over the great arch, and used the camera. He tried various settings to see if he could read the writing, but announced that it was hopeless. “We’ll have to rely on young Peter t’ tell us what is in this place. And we’ll have to see what the discs look like, too. I have an idea o’ how w
e may leave by them and do some more exploring, should that be necessary t’ find the treasure. ’Twill surely be necessary t’ find the pinnace, o’ course. But I has good hopes o’ learnin’ more o’ that afore long.”
He spoke with his usual optimism, though he got black looks from the crew, who were close to another mutiny.
We went in, the crew using their phones as torches to illuminate the darkness of a crypt at midnight. I wondered what the creatures had been who were in it last, what they had looked like, how they had moved. It was hard to believe they had been much like either men or kzin. The sheer size of the place suggested something massive. It gave a weird tingle under the skin to think of them, all long gone, with only their ghosts to watch. And perhaps they did indeed do so. There might be guardians of some sort, robotic no doubt, and there to ensure that no harm came to their legacy. I had seen no sign of such things, but that meant little.
We went up the stairs to the saddle room, or the reading room, if you saw it more as a library, which I suppose it was. It was unlike any data repository I had seen before, of course. These days books were obsolete, and you got your information from a computer that lived in a big black box kept in liquid nitrogen, but I had seen pictures of old-fashioned libraries, and Marthar’s father had one. But not like this.
Why was everything kept as a separate book, with similar subjects close together? I suppose it was portable, you had only to pack up a few of the metal bars and a friendly bookreader and you could take it away with you. And of course, centralizing everything made it vulnerable; I had learned at school how a weird sort of desire for uniformity had made human beings centralize their economic systems at one time. It meant that when disaster struck, the whole thing would fall apart; it was complex but brittle: poor design. Most empires of the past had collapsed in a heap because of such poor design; but then they hadn’t been designed, they’d just grown for the most part, under the influence of people who had a desperate need to control. Control freaks, they called them, I thought. Much of history had been a battle between the control freaks and the people who liked being controlled on the one hand, and people who wanted to be free on the other hand. Neither side won for long. Fortunately, we now knew what government was for, those poor people had not. Obviously the builders of the towers had known enough to keep everything distributed and probably duplicated or triplicated. And it was easy to copy information, so if a whole tower fell, at least the contents could be copied again by machines. If an asteroid hit this world it would no doubt destroy a good deal, but not everything. The history of Earth told us that, before scrolls and then books were made, when a civilization fell, everything was lost. Homer’s Greeks had had no conception of the civilizations that had gone before them.