by Nancy Kress
Ann said, “You fainted, at the end of the tunnel. Do you remember?”
He didn’t. Ann nodded, reassured by whatever she saw on her miniature display. “You seem all right now. No headache? Nausea? Coldness?”
“I’m not in shock.”
“No, you’re not. And you’re here, that’s the important thing. We’re all here.”
“Look!” Dieter said, and stepped aside so he no longer blocked Bazargan’s view. David Allen had already turned away, looking disdainful. His tunic back fluttered in bloody ribbons. Gruber switched on his powerful torch, and Bazargan gasped. He staggered to his feet.
They stood in Aladdin’s cave, in a bey’s treasure room. Jewels sparkled on the cave ceiling, on the walls, in heaps on the floor. As Bazargan’s dazzled eyes adjusted to the bright light, he saw that the jewels were millions of gold crystals. Spattered among them were glowing flakes of pure gold as big as thumbnails. Gold nuggets glittered on the floor. Piles of white quartz sand glowed like spun glass.
“It’s a vug,” Dieter said happily. “Although I’ve never heard of one this big.”
“A what?” Bazargan said. The cavern must be twenty feet high, twenty-five feet in radius.
“A vug. Actually, it’s the inside of a geode. There must have been the caldera of a volcano right here once. The gold precipitates out from circulating water heated by magma.”
Bazargan touched a wall. Gold fiaked over his fingers like shining rain.
“It’s incredible.”
“Is it not?” Gruber said, swinging his torch proprietarily around the walls.
“You don’t understand me,” Bazargan said. “I mean, it is incredible that this has been here—how long, Dieter?”
“Hundreds of thousands of years.”
“—and no one of World has ever explored it, come here, mined the gold.”
Allen said scornfully, “Gold is not a monetary standard on World.”
“No,” Bazargan answered. “But it is used in jewelry and other decoration. This could have made—could still make—someone very wealthy.”
“No,” Ann said. “No trader would violate the sacred mountains by coming here, or taking anything away.”
Enli nodded. “I am the only Worlder who will ever see this.”
She said it with a new authority that made them all turn to study her. Small, squat, her drab neckfur matted and dusted with stone powder, Enli gazed calmly at the sparkling forbidden heart of her planet’s beliefs. In the silence Bazargan suddenly became aware of water dripping somewhere.
“Enli,” Ann said, “are you all right? Do you have headpain?”
“Yes,” Enli said clearly. “I do. But I am all right.”
Something had happened to this alien girl. Bazargan could not imagine what.
David Allen said, not bothering to hide his contempt, “Worlders know they have a far greater treasure than shiny stones.”
Gruber turned to geological matters. “The radioactivity isn’t too pronounced here. You should be all right, David, without a suit. But the rate of thermal gradient has decreased. I still don’t understand this. The rate should increase as we go higher, decrease as we descend. And it is the opposite.” He frowned at his wrist display.
Bazargan said, “Tell me again why that should happen.”
“On every planet we’ve surveyed, there is very slow radioactivity in the rock near the surface. The disintegration produces small amounts of heat, which accumulates over millions of years—rock is an excellent insulator, you know. But this rate of temperature rise decreases as you descend, since there is not much radioactivity in the deeper layers. But not here.”
Ann said, “Does that mean there is something radioactive buried in these mountains?”
“Possibly,” Dieter said. “But it would have to be very large to generate such a rate increase. Or very unusual.”
“But,” Bazargan said—the expression on Dieter’s face told him this was important, even though Bazargan would rather get on with more immediate concerns—“don’t we already know that the Neury Mountains are unusually radioactive? Dr. Johnson said something about neutrino flow from here, back on the Zeus …”
“Yes. But not so localized as this must be in order to cause this sort of thermal effect. There is something very small but very powerful radiating in these mountains, and doing it so unevenly … Some of the variation is due to the different insulating properties of the rock. You have so much here: light basalt and heavy granite, pahoehoe flows and aa flows, all a chronological jumble.”
“Well, then—”
“But not all due to difference in rock composition, no. Not all. And the distribution of radioactivity, too—it is very strange.”
“Yes,” Bazargan said. “If you say so. But now we must move on, Dieter.”
The geologist continued to frown at his display, calling up different combinations of data. Bazargan sighed inwardly. He still felt shaky and light-headed and very, very tired. Around him the gorgeous golden cavern sparkled like something from a fairy tale, but all four humans in it looked like what they were: misplaced, battered, and desperate.
David Allen stood at the far edge of the vug, talking quietly to Enli. Bazargan couldn’t see her face, but he saw David’s. His upper lip twitched convulsively, in contrast to his strange, omnipresent smile and the angry slant of his eyebrows. The bloody tatters of his shirt made him look like some maimed harlequin.
“Dieter,” Ann said, “Ahmed wants us to go. You said there was an open space to raise the Zeus? And water, so we can eat?”
Reluctantly, Gruber put away his data and led them on. The next tunnel, Bazargan was grateful to see, was tall enough to stand up in. But the bottom quickly became full of cold water covering broken, slippery rocks. Twice Bazargan slipped, soaking himself. His suit kept him warm enough, but he was so tired. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.
Something living slithered away from him in the water.
Here? Inside a mountain? But then the tunnel turned at almost a ninety-degree angle and abruptly they were out.
He stood under a heavy overhang of rock in what looked at first like another cavern. But as his eyes adjusted, Bazargan saw that instead it was another high, open rift in the mountains, larger than the last one. Almost a hidden upland valley. Stars glowed in a clear night sky.
Night again. He had lost track of time.
Gruber swept his torch over the small valley. The dark low shapes of vegetation dotted the ground. He led them between shoulder-high bushes to a small waterfall tumbling out of rock wall.
“We can camp here,” Gruber said, “after I test the water. Look, the overhang here is much drier, and there are dry alcoves under it. David, it is your turn for my suit, I think, although the radiation is not bad here.”
David Allen’s eyes blazed. “I don’t want your stinking suit! Do you think I don’t know what you’re up to, you bastard?” He stalked off in the darkness.
Gruber said, with heavy sarcasm, “And what am I supposed to be up to now?”
“Nothing,” Bazargan said wearily. “No, Ann, don’t go after him. Let’s just make camp and call the Zeus.”
Gruber, still angry, said, “What is his problem, anyway?”
Unexpectedly, Ann answered. Her voice was somber. “Grandiose paranoid schizophrenia, I think. David’s daily Discipline mix was pretty heavy, and now he’s without it.”
“Grandiose paranoid schizophrenia?” Gruber said. “You mean he thinks he’s Napoleon and we’re all out to assassinate him?”
Bazargan couldn’t summon a smile. “Not quite that bad. But Ann is right. Enli, what was he talking with you about in the golden cavern?”
The little alien said, “About the headpain of unshared reality. Whether I have it now.”
Bazargan had to know. “And do you?”
“Yes. But different. Shared reality has shifted. Reality is different now.”
She spoke quietly, but a little silence followed her words. Ann put her hand on Enli�
��s shoulder. Gruber, immune to nuance, burst out, “How the hell did Allen get on this expedition in the first place?”
His father arranged it for him, Bazargan thought but didn’t say. Germans understood more than Americans about the obligations of family, but not much more. Bazargan was so tired. But he pulled out the official comlink while they were in the open.
The Zeus did not answer.
“All right,” Gruber said, “let’s make camp. Over there is—Enli? What is it? What’s the matter?”
That Gruber noticed someone else’s emotional state made Bazargan turn quickly. Enli stood at the edge of the circle of Gruber’s torchlight, her face turned up to the sky. “The moon … the moon is leaving.”
In the sky just above the towering rock, one of World’s moons moved. It took Bazargan a moment to realize that this was one of the “fast-blooming” moons—didn’t it usually cross the sky every few hours? Yes. And it moved so fast it was retrograde. Now it stood almost still except for an almost imperceptible inching in the direction of the zenith.
“The artifact,” Gruber said.
“Tas,” Enli said, dazed. “Tas is leaving us.”
“The Terrans in the big flying boat are moving it out of orbit,” Gruber told her, with what he probably thought was great sensitivity. “You remember, we told Voratur. You were there.”
Enli didn’t answer. That night—only two days ago?—burned Bazargan’s mind. Ben, Bonnie, the blood on the yellow nightdress … he’d pushed it out of his mind. But that never worked for long.
Ann said in her imperfect World, “Enli, I have no doses like government pills, but I can to give you something to sleep, to escape the headpain that way.”
Enli said, “I’m not in pain.” Then, tearing her eyes away from the sky, “Here I’m not in headpain. No headpain. Not since the littlest tunnel.”
Even in the gloom, Bazargan could see Ann’s eyes sharpen. “No pain? None?”
“None,” Enli said. “It is different now.”
“Why is it different? Why, Enli?”
Enli repeated her earlier words, “Shared reality is different now,” but Ann apparently found that inadequate. She turned swiftly to Gruber. “Dieter?”
He already had out his handheld. “Lieber Gott! Look at this!”
“At what?” Bazargan said.
“The radioactivity—it has ceased. It was detectable earlier, but now—” He began walking around the rocky valley with his handheld, taking the torch with him. Bazargan, Ann, and Enli waited in the dark. It seemed to Bazargan that the moon was moving faster now, although perhaps that was just his imagination.
David still brooded somewhere out there in the darkness, pacing and twitching. Grandiose paranoid schizophrenia. Masked by the Discipline, until now.
The prices we end up paying for the technology that forms us.
Gruber returned. “Listen, Ann. The geothermal distribution makes a toroidal pattern. You know, like a doughnut, with an empty center. The thickest part graphs to where we all blanked out yesterday and couldn’t think, except Enli. And now we’re in the very center of the distribution.”
“I don’t understand,” Ann said.
Bazargan said, “You mean the heat distribution and the … the thinking disruptions are related? When we couldn’t think clearly, and now when Enli has no shared-reality mechanism?”
“Yes,” Gruber said. “According to the data.”
“That’s not possible,” Ann said reasonably. “Dieter, did you check for a second field, an electromagnetic one, perhaps generated by the first field?”
“Yes, yes. It is not electromagnetic. I don’t know what this is. There is nothing like it in nature. Or not in nature! It is more like … like a hurricane. A still eye, then wind force increasing in strength and area, then decreasing again.”
Bazargan, no physicist even when not exhausted, struggled to follow Gruber’s thoughts. “A hurricane. But not winds. What does this force do? I mean, how?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know at all.”
Ann burst out, “If only I had my Lagerfeld equipment! If only I could scan all of our brains at various places! Dieter, do you think—”
Gruber wasn’t listening. He keyed rapidly on his handheld, studied the results, and walked off. In a few minutes he was back.
“The center. It is there, whatever it is.”
“Where?”
“Underground, straight down from here. About a quarter kilometer down.”
Relief filled Bazargan. A quarter kilometer was too deep for Gruber to start digging with a forked stick. But then Gruber said, “There are so many passages downward. But how to find the right one?”
“No,” Bazargan said, surprising himself with the force and loudness of the word. “No, Dieter. Lateral tunnels are one thing. Spelunking down chutes and chimneys—I know how dangerous that is. And you don’t have the right equipment. We can’t afford to lose you.”
“Ahmed, this thing down there is another artifact. Like the space tunnels, like Tas. It’s been there since before these mountains thrust up from the seabed, and it’s still generating a type of field with totally new properties. This is the greatest potential discovery of the century … We must go investigate!”
“No. Eventually, perhaps, with an expedition equipped for drilling and spelunking, and after the proper permissions are worked out with both the Solar Alliance and Rafkit Seloe. Syree Johnson—”
“Damn Syree Johnson! This is mine!”
“This is World’s,” Bazargan said, and hoped Enli’s English was not yet good enough to follow the debate. “Haven’t we already done enough to World? We don’t even know if the other artifact, Tas, is going to emit some sort of force that turns the whole planet into a radioactive morgue.”
Gruber looked at Bazargan for a long time. Finally he nodded somberly. “You’re right. We cannot bring a huge equipped drilling expedition to a place sacred to the Worlders.”
Bazargan looked at him sharply—it just did not sound like Gruber—but before he could answer, Enli said, “Obri was the home of the First Flower, before she came down to unfold her petals and create World. Now the Neury Mountains are the home of her soul. If you dig up the mountains, the soul of the First Flower will wilt. And World will wilt with Her.”
Ann said reassuringly, “No one will dig up the Neury Mountains, Enli.”
“Yes,” Enli said, and it was impossible to tell from her voice what the alien meant. Her reality was not theirs.
Something large crashed into an unseen bush. Bazargan said quickly, “Don’t tell David about the toroidal field. Or the new artifact, or … anything. Not in his present state.”
Ann and Gruber nodded. Again, Bazargan could not tell what Enli thought. Then David was with them.
“The Zeus?” he demanded.
“She doesn’t answer,” Bazargan said.
David nodded curtly. “Then make camp now. It’s driest and most sheltered over here. Follow me.”
“Meine Gott,” Gruber said, “he acts like a general ordering around slaves.”
“Let it go,” Bazargan warned.
They unrolled their blankets at the back of a dry alcovelike crevice, about fifteen feet into the rock. Gruber left one of the smaller torches turned on: enough to see by, not too much to waste power. Dry now, warmed by his s-suit, fed with the water-expanded food powders, Bazargan tried to sleep. It should have been easy; he was exhausted. But his mind whirled.
Unknown forces. Underground, in the sky. The force of the Fallers against the Zeus, of Syree Johnson’s “wave effect” against the Worlders, of David’s unmedicated mind against itself. The force of Enli’s religious faith, of her shared-reality mechanism, of whatever new reality was disrupting it. What did Enli make of that? Wasn’t truth changed irrevocably for her now? She had gone into the Neury Mountains, and had not died. She had kept close to unreal persons, and her headaches had mysteriously ceased. She had seen Terrans, her intellectual and technological super
iors, reduced to helpless zombies whom she had to lead by the hand. So much Enli had believed before had been proven untrue.
The untrue, Bazargan knew, was not always valueless. Not even when it was completely ungrounded in physical reality. It was the untruth of the morning garden that had gotten him through the tunnel.
Consider religious faith, an untruth the solar system had mostly outgrown. While it had lasted, while it had been believed, it had provided an alternate set of values to the ones rewarded by Darwinian reality. The world now rewarded push, shrewdness, money, power, single-mindedness, gregarious self-advancement. Religions—most of them, anyway—had promoted self-effacement, sacrifice, restraint. It had haloed in emotional glory the quiet life of duty, the sacrificial life of service to family, the altruistic life that did not wield money or power. From this everyone had benefited. The quiet wife and mother, the humble workman who could dedicate his work to his gods, the peacemaker who did not accumulate power but sought to defuse it. They could, thanks to their faith, measure themselves by something other than the pomp and fame celebrated by the world. When faith went, it was as if half of a balance had been sheared off.
How much of a balance were they shearing off for Enli? For all of World?
Assuming World survived human Darwinian reality at all.
Amid such troubled thoughts, Bazargan finally slept. When he awoke, the wide mouth of their cave showed daylight. He rose creaking—hard rock on old bones—and blinked sleepily. Abruptly he came fully awake.
Only Ann slept beside the glowing torch. Dieter Gruber, David Allen, and Enli were all gone.
He didn’t find them anywhere in the small upland valley. Bazargan risked shouting. No one answered. He woke Ann, then took the torch and made himself go back through the half-submerged tunnel to the vug, thinking they might have gone to scrape gold off the walls … but Enli would not scrape gold off the sacred home of the First Flower. Gruber might have gone to collect samples, but he would not have taken Enli with him, let alone David. David had expressed contempt for mere gold.
They were not in the vug.
When he returned, wet and shaken, Ann waited for him at the tunnel entrance. Her hair hung lank around her drawn face. Bluish circles smudged the skin under her eyes.
