"Yes," Altia said, "And they only appear in proximity to the Drifter artifacts in this location."
"Fascinating," Shivia said, "Do you know if this was something done during his encounter with the Buzzer scientist, or is it a more general effect to do with exposure, and, if so, why hasn't it effected any of us?"
"I have no idea," Altia said, "But I will let you know as soon as it is possible to start building some kind of hypothesis."
"Excellent. I need you to keep me informed about everything that's going on here," Shivia waved a hand at Knave lying on the table, "This for example, but I also need a concerted effort made to get this place mapped, with samples taken. Even though I'm being called away to other experiments, this place will remain at the forefront of my attention. I have a feeling it will turn out to be central to our efforts to understand the Drifter culture."
"Called away?"
"Altia, I have been called back to Science Ministry HQ," Shivia said, "You will be taking control of operations on Ice Tomb. I am transferring control of this scientific facility to you. The local navy and ground forces commanders will ensure your security, and will continue to pacify remaining pockets of Buzzer resistance, but you will be in charge of all operations regarding the scientific base and the dig."
"This is a great honor, Shivia. Thank you."
"It is deserved," Shivia nodded, "After me, you have one of the best scientific minds of our culture. Just explore as much of the riches available here as possible, catalog and send it. Box up and send me anything that isn't nailed down. I'm counting on you."
"I won't let you down," Altia said.
Shivia nodded again, clapped Altia on the shoulder, turned and left. Altia watched her exit the room, and it took her a moment to empty her mind again and return to studying Knave. Shivia was soon forgotten as she studied the symbols. There was no context to them, but she could see that the Drifter symbol for home was repeated twice, once at the start of the sequence, and once at the end. She was also studying the scans of Knave provided by the most sensitive equipment she could get her hands on. She couldn't find any physical abnormalities.
"What process causes the symbols to appear?" she asked, for the benefit of the recording.
She suspected that it wouldn't make any difference what scale she studied Knave at. There would be no physical clue as to the cause or the nature of the signs. She adjusted the mix of neurochemicals she was introducing into Knave's head, but the brain patterns and mental activity she was seeing all seemed normal. She gave up in exasperation and set the machines to slowly wake Knave, then went to sit at her usual console.
Shivia's questions had been good ones. Altia sat there wondering if the signs written across Knave's chest were the doing of the room's drifter technology, of the Buzzer scientist, of some strange mixture of the two, or if she would ever know.
She was roused from her pondering by Knave, who started groaning on the table. The devices that had been monitoring him folded out of the way as he swung his legs over the side of the couch and sat up. They would still be scanning until he was a few steps away from the table, but the resolution dropped, and then dropped even more as he started to move around.
"Well, doc," he said, "Am I still human?"
"You're as close as you likely ever were. I can't find any mechanism that is making these symbols appear. All I can say is the topography of your skin is not altering, so it is some process - chemical maybe - that is taking place in the cells themselves."
Knave paused, digesting this.
"So I've been messed with at a cellular level?"
"Probably some even more basic level than that."
"Great," Knave nodded, "And was it the Buzzer who did this, or was it the Drifter technology, working all on its own."
"It's hard to say," Altia admitted her ignorance unwillingly, "It could be connected to the sign that the Buzzer wrote, to the Drifter technology reacting to the confrontation, or maybe the Buzzer set the machinery to attack you in some way and your drones saved your life, or maybe they are just stupid, blood-thirsty machines and they murdered one of the finest minds in the galaxy."
"At least you have theories," Knave said, a smile catching at the corner of his mouth, "I suppose this means we'll be seeing a lot more of each other, me being a test subject now."
Altia nodded.
"I suppose that's what it means," she said.
***
Then followed a period that Knave would remember as one of the happiest times of his life. Months went by, and a kind of normality descended on the ice moon. The attacks mounted by Buzzer forces remaining on the planet became less frequent and less intense. Tarazet forces gained control of the entire Mount Fang complex, and the complex proved much more extensive than they had suspected.
The mountain itself was studded with Drifter structures and riddled with tunnels, but the tunnel complex went deeper, much deeper. There was level after level of structure, all accessed by stairways and shafts. The shafts used gravitic effects to allow people to rise and descend, powered by gentle arm movements. They were still operational, and they were lined with symbols.
Knave loved plummeting down through the grav shafts much better than plodding down the spiral ramps, and it was possible to reach quite a speed before the shaft overrode his actions and slowed him down.
Altia explored everywhere, and, of course, Knave came with her. He became a kind of Drifter technology detector. In areas of the Mount Fang complex where Drifter technology was densest and in the best working order, the symbols on Knave's chest became more distinct, while out on the surface, or in structures of exclusively Buzzer technology, they faded to nothing. All Knave had to do was accompany Altia through her day and share all her triumphs and discoveries with her.
He started to develop a sort of sixth sense for Drifter technology. He didn't know if it was his imagination, or something real, but he would get a sensation in the area round his heart when Drifter technology was at its densest.
"Deeper," Knave said one day, "I think we need to go deeper."
They were already many levels deeper than they had ever been before. They were alone, except for drones. Altia had used her new-found authority to get hold of a team of very advanced drones. There were five of them and they were bipedal, light, slim, and very mobile. Altia wanted them to be able to go anywhere that she and Knave went, but they were also very capable. They were each armed with a short but heavy blaster slung under the right forearm. The five of them, working as a team, could easily hold of a couple of stray Buzzers, which was judged to be the likeliest threat they might encounter.
Even the drones' faces were graceful. They were about Altia's height with a female cast to their metal jaws. Their sensors were hidden away behind reflective blaster armor so they looked a little blank faced and they had no indication of a mouth at all. If they needed to vocalize, it came from a unit in their chest. They had each been given an identification number for their current mission, ranging from VIP-1 to VIP-5. Altia was the very important person and their mission was to keep her alive. Knave had quickly started calling them Viper 1 to Viper 5 and Altia had picked up the habit.
One of the five Viper's was always within earshot, and they were constantly repositioning, checking the environment for danger, making sure no stray Buzzer or other threat was anywhere near their VIP charge. They were often the first to spot a new passage, or a different way ahead, and they reported directly to both Altia and Knave.
"We can proceed forward or to the right, no threats detected," Viper-4 said.
Then it simply waited for a response. It would wait all day if need be. None of the Vipers were ever in any hurry. They only hurried when their human charges did, trotting, or even gracefully running, to stay ahead of them and make sure their route was secure.
"Thank you," Altia said, always polite, even to a drone, then turned her attention back to Knave, "What do you mean deeper? We have penetrated down almost as far as the liquid ocean below t
he ice."
"Yes," Knave said, "But I have the firm feeling that we can go even deeper."
"How?" Altia asked.
She was now always genuinely interested in any of his suggestions. He had been physically marked by the ancient Drifter culture. He was no longer some ordinary slug in her eyes.
"The grav shafts don't seem to extend below this level," she said, "Or, at least, we haven't encountered any in days."
It had been days wandering this, the lowest level yet discovered, and weeks mapping the structure above, and Knave had been thoroughly enjoying it. He had gotten used to the dark corridors and chambers, to sleeping in temporary structures, set up among the alien ruins.
"There is a way," Knave said.
He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. He could see Altia's face in the light from the readouts within her suit helmet's face plate. She simply raised an eyebrow, surprised but not in a disbelieving way.
"All right," she said, "But, we haven't found a grav shaft that goes any deeper, and without the grav shafts, it is going to be difficult to go lower."
"You know what it is?" Knave said.
"No," Altia was still being very patient with him.
"I've done a few behind the scenes jobs."
"Uh-huh."
"And you see buildings from a different perspective if you are in the kitchens washing dishes, or in the garage guarding grav transports."
"That's robot work," Altia said.
"Not on my home planet," Knave said, quietly, almost to himself.
"Go on."
"You see, in a job like that, that a structure has two faces, one that is for show, and one that is more functional. There's a big difference between the turbo-elevators in a hotel lobby and the bare grav platform at the back for goods and luggage transport. The lobby elevators are showy, obvious, but the goods platform doesn't look much different from all the other bare systems, in the back of the hotel."
"So we're looking for the goods elevator?" Altia asked.
"Sort of," Knave said, his confidence deserting him a little, "maybe."
"It's an interesting theory," Altia mused, "If you're right, it'll open up as yet unexplored parts of the structure."
Altia pulled a hologram projector out of a pouch on her utility belt and looked around for a surface to set it up on. They were in a chamber with three exits, the one they had come in through, and the two options they had to choose from to continue their mapping and exploration. There were two structures in the room that reached to human chest height, but didn't look like furniture. They looked more like computer cores, or some other hot equipment that needed numerous heat vanes around the sides. The tops, however, were flat and level. Altia placed the projector on top of one of the structures and switched it on. A couple of indicator lights sprung to life, but otherwise her hologram projector did nothing.
"Let me see schematics of the floor topography of this level," Altia told the small device.
The device lit up the room with a patchwork quilt of the floor topography that had so far been scanned. It was undoubtedly out of date, but communications were proving difficult within the complex, so she would have to wait till she got back to their central computing center before she could update it.
"Still lots of empty quadrants," Knave noticed.
"It might still be enough," Altia said over her shoulder, then turned her attention back to the projector, "Display only structure that is repeated four times or more."
A lot of the patchwork representation of the floor topography melted away. What was left was a surprisingly large number of structures that were repeated throughout this lowest level of the Drifter passages below Mount Fang.
"This is where we should probably start investigating," Altia said, "If there are any hidden elevators, they're likely to be a floor-level structure that repeats."
***
Two weeks later they were still looking for Knave's goods elevators. Altia was in the center of a likely chamber floor, a chamber that was not near the center of the complex, but was more of an outlying structure. It wasn't well connected either, with just a single door providing access. The Vipers were at the doorway, and spread down the corridor, leaving Knave and Altia to investigate the room. Knave was just standing and staring, taking in the huge wall opposite the chamber entrance. It seemed to be a mural.
"I'm no expert," Knave said, "But won't these pictures be useful in deciphering the Drifter language?"
"Decrypting," Altia said.
She was kneeling in the center of the room, looking at one of the items of repeating floor topography that had still not given up its secrets.
"What?"
"The process is called decrypting," Altia repeated, "and it's on hold at the moment because I'm trying to help you get to some secret lower level, even though there is no direct evidence for the existence of such a level, other than a feeling you had."
"If it helps," Knave said, turning to look at her in the center of the room, "I'm getting that feeling very strongly now."
"Really? Because, as far as I can tell, this latest item of repeating floor topography looks like a simple vent, or maybe a heat sink or something. It doesn't look like an elevator or a grav platform."
"No," Knave admitted, "Perhaps not."
He watched her taking readings with some sort of scanner, then unpack some tools from her utility belt. His attention wandered to the walls of the chamber again. They were absolutely covered in technology of one form or another. There were conduits, pipes, switching places, circuit boards, control panels, all in the robust bronze finish preferred by the Drifters, all carved over with symbols, and yet, beneath the mess of, what seemed to Knave, later additions, there was a mural. It looked like an abstract relief sculpture, with disjointed shapes and flat areas, but knave felt there had to be some meaning there.
"Remember when you were telling me about your idea of flow?" Knave said.
"Hmm?" Altia was distracted.
"You told me," Knave carried on, whether she was listening or not, more for himself, "that you had the idea of flow. You said that was the breakthrough. You told me that once you had decided to look at everything through this one prism, it had all started to take shape."
"This isn't a simple vent," Altia mused, not really listening to Knave, "but then again, what about Drifter technology is simple?"
"The grav shafts are simple," Knave volunteered.
"Simple to use," Altia nodded, though neither were looking at each other, she engrossed with her floor feature, he with his mural, "but far from simple to construct."
"This mural seems simple too," Knave mused, "but perhaps it hides some sort of complexity."
Altia looked up. He had succeeded in attracting her attention, but she didn't say anything. She just put her tools down on the floor of the chamber, laid her hands in her lap and observed him. Knave traced a shape within the mural with his fingers.
"See?" he said, "There are two of these. This shape here and this one here. They look different, but something about them feels the same."
"Go on," Altia said.
"This structure containing them is this room, maybe. And this area down here is a lower level."
"You seem to be reading an awful lot into an essentially abstract carving," Altia said.
"Perhaps I'm deluding myself," Knave said, "The artist who created this wall carving must have lived...how long ago?"
"Before what we think of as the first founding of our civilization," Altia said, "And it has been protected from the moon's plate tectonics across all the immense stretches of time since then."
"Exactly," Knave said, "How can any human possibly know what was going through that Drifter's head when it stood here with a hammer and chisel and did this?"
"I doubt it used a chisel," Altia said.
"Oh no?"
"No. The surfaces are too smooth for that."
"Does it look to you like the Drifters were bipeds?"
"Yes," Altia said, "Lik
e us."
"But the perspective in the image is off somehow," Knave said, "Or they were enormous."
"These are the sort of things I would love to find out.," Altia said, "But, to focus for a moment, if this really was the way down that we've been looking for, how do we activate it?"
"Dunno," Knave said, after a pause.
"That's helpful, Knave," she said, but there was a smile on her lips.
"How much Drifter tech have we actually seen in operation?" he asked.
"Only the stuff that is always on, like the grav elevators and the automatic repair modules. Oh," Altia paused for a second, "and the machine in the room with you and the Buzzer scientist."
"Oh yeah. That machine was definitely working. But, I've been wondering. The Buzzer. Did he make that happen?" Knave asked, "And even if he did, how did he do it?"
Altia didn't answer, and Knave could see that she was thinking hard. He watched her face, he liked to watch her think. Not her whole face though. Through the environment-suit helmet all he could see was her forehead, eyes and a bit of her upper lip. A small vent in the suit's neck sent out a puff of gas into the frigid air, where it immediately froze and fell to the ground as snow, reminding Knave that he certainly didn't want to be in here without his suit on. There were reflections in the faceplate of her suit, reflections of the bronze-like metal of the room around them, and the stone of the carved walls beneath the metal. The most bronze was in the ceiling above them, Knave saw in the reflection. He looked up, to see hardly any stone, all machines, every one with a bronze sheen.
"Must be hell to polish," he said.
"That joke wasn't funny the first time," Altia groaned, craning her neck to join him in looking at the ceiling, "but there is an unusual amount of technology in here."
"Like in the room where it happened."
Altia didn't need him to explain. She knew he was talking about his encounter with the Buzzer scientist. She had seen the same thing he had, or at least a recording of it, through his suit cameras.
"Where the Buzzer carved an operator," she said.
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