The Chara Talisman

by Alastair Mayer

  THE CHARA

  TALISMAN

  a novel of T-space

  Alastair Mayer

  Mabash Books

  The Chara Talisman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Alastair Mayer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed, electronic, or other form without permission. E-book editions of this book are available wherever fine e-books are sold.

  Chapters 1, 4 and part of 6 originally appeared in slightly different form as the short story “Stone Age” in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2011, Dell Publications.

  Cover © 2011 by Mabash Books

  Image credits:

  girl touching blue screen © Mike Kiev - Fotolia.com

  pyramid 3 © chrisharvey - Fotolia.com

  Images used by permission.

  A Mabash Books original.

  First printing, November 2011

  Mabash Books, Centennial, Colorado

  Epub ISBN-13: 978-1-4524-8022-0

  Kindle ASIN: B0065USS7G

  Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-6155-6623-8

  For Douglas W. F. Mayer, 1919-1976.

  Dad, I'm sorry you missed it. I think you would have enjoyed it.

  Contents

  1: Verdigris

  2: Roberts

  3: The Diagram

  4: Tomb Raiders

  5: Spitzer Spaceport

  6: Unexpected Results

  7: Special Delivery

  8: Shipyards

  9: Secrets Revealed

  10: Unwelcome Intrusion

  11: Repairs Complete

  12: Mugged

  13: Old Friends

  14: Departure Preparations

  15: Marten

  16: The Talisman

  17: Rico and Marten

  18: Departure

  19: En Route

  20: Chara Arrival

  21: Expedition

  22: Sabertooth

  23: To the Pyramid

  24: Within the Pyramid

  25: Trapped

  26: Exploring

  27: Descent

  28: The Gizmo

  29: Down and Out

  30: Getting Wet

  31: The Test

  32: Dogfight

  33: Pyramid Redux

  34: The Hawk

  35: Snowball

  36: Maynard

  37: Exchange

  38: Home

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Preview: The Reticuli Deception

  THE CHARA

  TALISMAN

  Chapter 1: Verdigris

  The jungle, Delta Pavonis III

  “We’ve found something!”

  Dr. Hannibal Carson looked up over the heads of his men to see a ridge, or perhaps a wall, extending into the jungle on either side of the trail they had hacked through the thick vegetation. It stood four meters high and overgrown with moss and vines. A scattering of pale blue starbursts of tiny flowers punctuated the green. Carson pushed his way to the front. “Let’s clear a wider space here, let’s get a good look.” Together the four men cut away at the tree branches until they had made a small clearing.

  “Is this it?” asked Brian, one of the two workers Carson had hired back in Verdigris City. The eager note in his voice reflected Carson’s own hope.

  Carson’s gaze took in the wall curving away on either side, the upper surface arching over into a dome. Damn. His shoulders slumped. “This has curved sides. There’s nothing unusual about it.” He slipped his omni off his wrist and unfolded it into a slate, then accessed the radar map. He checked it, then looked up and around. The dense greenery made it impossible to see more than a few meters. “We’re a bit off track.” He faded the slate and held it up at arm’s length, looking through it at the virtual track projecting through the jungle. “All right, the one we want is forty-two meters that way.” He gestured at an angle from the path they had come from. “Sorry gentlemen, not much further now.”

  He closed the omni and wrapped it back around his wrist as Brian and Gregor, the other hired hand, powered up their machetes again. Rajesh Gupta, his ship’s pilot, came over and fell in beside him to talk.

  “So it is the shape, isn’t it?” Gupta said. “The square tomb. That is why we are out here 200 klicks from the city when there are plenty of ruins closer.”

  “That’s part of it. Close to the city the structures have already been explored. Most have been picked over and looted.”

  “And the shape?”

  Carson paused, debating how much to tell. “I think it’s a pyramid. Pyramids have been found on nearly every planet that ever showed signs of intelligent natives, but most of the burial structures here are round.”

  “But surely the pyramid is a basic shape. Is it not just coincidence?”

  “No, I don’t think it is. I don’t believe in coincidence. Tetrahedral pyramids, with a triangular base, would be a more basic shape, and no planet has them. Nobody constructs cubes or cones. And the dating; all the pyramids we’ve found on other planets are ten to twenty thousand years old.” As he spoke, Carson noticed a slim green ribbon ripple out of the jungle canopy ahead. It glided toward them and settled on Gupta’s shoulder. A jade ribbon snake.

  Carson reached over and flicked it to the ground, then stomped on its head, hard.

  Gupta flinched, then looked down. “A flying snake is only mildly toxic to humans, there was no need to do that.”

  “Flying snakes on Earth, perhaps,” said Carson. “This is a jade, its venom compares to that of a krait or a taipan.”

  Gupta paled. “That deadly?”

  “Only if you let them bite you. Come on.”

  Gupta looked up at the branches above them, then down at the body of the snake. He brought his heel down hard on its already flattened head.

  Carson looked at him, an eyebrow raised.

  “Just making sure,” Gupta said. “Thank you, Hannibal.”

  “Nothing,” Carson said.

  “You were talking about pyramids,” Gupta reminded him a few moments later.

  “Only that we’ve seen their like on many different planets, with not a lot of difference in age. There must be a connection.”

  “Spacefarers?” Gupta shook his head. “Come on, I like a good story as much as the next person, but there is no evidence for them.”

  “Says the man walking on a planet that was terraformed long before humans got here,” Carson said, and grinned.

  “The Terraformers have been gone for over sixty million years. It is unlikely that they have anything to do with ten-thousand year old pyramids.”

  “No, of course not.” Carson took a moment to wave away a tiny flying insect that whined around his head, then cursed and swatted one that was biting his neck. He brought his hand around to examine the smear of blood and crushed insect on his fingers. “Speaking of Terraformers, what possessed them to import mosquitoes to this planet?” He wiped his fingers on the side of his pants leg.

  Gupta just shrugged.

  “Anyway,” Carson continued, “I have a theory, but I’m looking for more evidence. My dean will have me back cataloging arrowheads if I don’t turn up something concrete.” The dean, Matthews, had been emphatic about that at their last meeting, calling Carson’s theory of a recent, non-human spacefaring species “crackpot” and even “Von Danikenism,” threatening dire consequences if word of it tarnished the university’s reputation.

  “So what do you think was the reason for making this tomb a
pyramid?” Gupta said. “If that is what it turns out to be.” The jungle's canopy blocked any direct view from the air, on the mapping radar image their target showed as little more than a blurred square.

  “I don’t know. There may have been something special about the person it was built for.” Carson hoped that would turn out to be the case.

  “Ah. I just wondered . . .” Gupta’s voice trailed off.

  “Wondered what?”

  “Oh, nothing. When pilots get together they swap many tall stories, some of them quite strange.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nonsense stories, old spacer tales. Seeing ghosts out the window in warp, signs of a spaceship landing too big for any possible ship, flying pyramids. Most of it bullshit.”

  “Flying pyramids?” Carson wasn’t sure he had heard that right.

  “As I said, bullshit stories,” said Gupta, straight-faced.

  Carson was trying to figure out if Gupta was serious or just pulling his leg when Gregor, now in the lead, called out.

  “I think this is it!”

  Carson came forward to the wall Gregor had reached. This too was covered with a growth of vine and moss, but it had straighter, flatter sides. Could it be?

  “Let’s take a look.” Carson eased a patch of moss away from the sloping surface to reveal mottled stone beneath. “So far so good.” He peeled away another strip of moss, then another and another. His heart beat faster when one of the patches lifted to reveal that the chiseled edge of one stone abutted the next perfectly. Constructed, not natural.

  Carson moved quickly but precisely, pulling back the loose vines and stripping the moss away from the rock in a grid. By the time he had uncovered half a square meter of the underlying stone, it was obvious that this was part of a larger stonework wall. The individual blocks had been carefully shaped and fitted together. “Yes, this is it.”

  The others surged forward and began to rip vegetation from the wall, their earlier fatigue gone.

  “Wait, stop!” Carson waved them back. “Take it easy, we don’t want to damage anything. Spread out. Remove it in strips, just enough to see what’s underneath.”

  They did so, every man moving a meter or so from his neighbor, removing a handful of vegetation, enough to see the smooth rock beneath, then moving further along the wall. After several minutes of this, there was a shout from Gregor.

  “Dr. Carson, here! I’ve found a carving.”

  The group scrambled over. Carson examined the sculpted surface of the bared patch of stone.

  “Gupta, would you set up the recorder? The rest of you, when Captain Gupta is set up, we will carefully peel back the moss.” He gestured to outline an area roughly two meters square. “Let’s say this area here.”

  With the recorder running, they set to it with such enthusiasm that several times Carson had to remind them to slow down. He was as eager as they were, but training and experience forced him to be methodical. When they had cleared the section, they all paused and stepped back to look at what they had unveiled.

  “Wow!” someone said in a hushed tone.

  “Excellent!” said Carson, as he gazed at the relief carving of a face. The face was humanoid in that it had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but then so did any vertebrate. The eyes were too far apart, and wide open, showing slit pupils like a cat’s. The nose was a pair of thin vertical ovals. The effect would have been reptilian if it were not for the mouth, which opened in a big O nearly a meter across.

  Carson pulled out his omni and panned its camera across the face, speaking his observations into it as he did so. As he closed the omni and stuck it back in his belt again, he looked around at his team and saw that Brian had his own omni out.

  “Hey, Dr. C,” Brian called, “stand beside it and I’ll take your picture.”

  “You don’t need to . . .” Carson began, then yielded. “All right, make it quick though.” He was impatient to get to work.

  When Brian was done, Carson called to get the others’ attention. “All right!” He pointed to the tangled vines and moss that still adorned the wall, and said “let’s get more of this stuff cleared away and see what we’ve got.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  A half hour later, they had removed enough of the vegetation to completely clear the face and the adjacent gray stone wall, recording it all as they went. Carson waved the workers back and bent to examine the face more closely. Its expression was, if human ideas of facial expression applied, one of somebody shouting or screaming. A thick stone rim outlined the wide circle of its mouth. Perhaps it was just laughing.

  He got down on his knees and examined the mouth more closely, probing the dirt still left in the recesses. He had studied the construction of Verdigris tombs. If this was like others, there should be . . . there. He felt a projection beneath the damp grit on his fingers. As he pressed in, he heard a muffled “clunk” and the round slab that formed the inner circle of the mouth settled backwards, just enough to clear the inner rim. Cool air wafted out of the gap.

  “Got it!” said Carson, triumph in his voice. “Here, help me roll it out of the way.”

  Brian and Gregor knelt down beside him and they all worked their fingers into the gap. It was awkward with the three of them together in the close space, but they managed to persuade the heavy stone to roll back behind the wall, leaving a clear opening. Carson took off his omni and waved it in the entrance to check for toxic gases; it was clear. He put the omni in a pocket and pulled out a flashlight. Shining it into the hole, he stuck his head in and looked around. In the middle of the small chamber was an oblong, roughly coffin-shaped bundle atop a raised platform. Small piles of artifacts—trinkets, primitive though artistic weapons, jewelry and the like—surrounded it. It was a body, possibly the tomb’s sole occupant, except for a few bugs and spiders, but if Carson was lucky the raised platform itself might hold another. This was fantastic.

  “Wonderful! It hasn’t been touched!” Carson called back. He crawled in a little further, then paused at an insistent warble from his omni.

  “What is it?” he heard Gregor ask from behind him.

  “Radiation warning, hang on.” Carson pulled out his omni and checked the reading. The radiation was at very low level. “It’s probably just radon build-up, or maybe it’s the rocks this thing is made from,” he said. Radon gas often accumulated in poorly ventilated structures, and rocks on this planet had a slightly higher concentration of natural radioactive elements than Earth. “A bit odd for this kind of rock, but it’s a low reading, nothing to worry about,” he called back to his men. He turned off the omni’s rad sensor to silence the warning.

  He backed out of the entrance and turned to the others. “All right, get the recorders in, I want it recorded from here first, then we’ll go in and image everything in detail.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  An hour later, they had begun to stack carefully documented artifacts outside the tomb entrance. Carson was alone inside the pyramid. The other two workers—there was barely room in the tomb for three people, four if you counted the original occupant—had stepped out for fresh air, taking more of the artifacts with them. Carson was examining the slab that the body lay on when he heard a shout.

  “Dr. Carson! Dr. Carson, come out here please!” one of the men called from outside.

  “All right, all right, just a moment.” Carson went back to the entrance hole and knelt down to crawl through. “What is it?” he said as he poked his head out, but the answer was obvious.

  In the cleared area around the tomb there were a half-dozen men: his three, and three others he’d never seen before. What fixed his attention, though, was the very lethal-looking assault rifle pointed at him. Glancing about, he noticed the other automatic weapons the newcomers were holding, aimed at him and his men. Worse, one of his own, Brian, was standing with them. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, “tomb raiders.”

  Chapter 2: Roberts

  Starship Sophie, near Epsilon Eridani

  Jac
queline Roberts heard the shrill of the radiation alarm and swore. She grabbed for a handhold but the ship’s gravity quit before she reached it. They had dropped out of warp. Her momentum carried her forward into the cockpit, over the back of the control chair. She pushed herself down from the overhead and shut off the alarm, wishing she could do the same with the wail from her passengers.

  “Captain, what’s happening?”

  “Sorry Mr. Geary, we hit an unexpected dust cloud. Are you all right? What about Mrs. Geary?”

  “We’ll be all right. You could have warned us.”

  Then it wouldn’t be unexpected, would it? Jackie bit back her response. “It’s unusual to encounter thick dust this far out, even near this system.”

  “Look, I know the Epsilon Eridani system has a lot of dust, but what if that had been a rock, or a chunk of ice?”

  “Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” No, we’d be a cloud of plasma. “Sorry, that was inappropriate.” It didn’t help Jackie’s temper that they’d been cooped up together in a living area the size of a trailer for the past week.

  No starship was very large, and the Sophie was only a medium sized ship to begin with. Her design sacrificed comfort for range. As if the close quarters weren’t enough, the Gearys had been acting like, well, like the newlyweds they were. Only a pair of geologists would go to Epsilon Eridani, with its two asteroid belts and a barely habitable planet, for a honeymoon.

  “There’s no harm done.” She eyed the radiation display to check. No, not enough to bother breaking out the antirad drugs. “We’d be out of warp anyway in another half-hour, we’re almost in-system. I’m sorry you didn’t get more warning.”