side was the team insignia, an angry mole with a hard hat, a pick axe and an eye patch.
He pressed a button on his wrist mounted control panel, and there sounded a gentle whistle in his helmet. He could hear a dozen or so voices at once. He cleared his throat and said, “Hello to all y’all. My name is Clutch Spelter and I’ve been told to expect you. They asked me to do my best to answer whatever questions you might have. So leave any bags you brought with ya in the Tunnel Rat” he said, patting the side of the tractor, “and we’ll get low.”
They walked down an excavated ramp to a windless cavern lit with oversized LEDs which were anchored to a fence around stalagmite covered ceiling. Spelter searched every visitor before allowing them on the elevator. The trip beneath the surface took nearly an orbital hour, long by stellar standards and frustrating by Titan.
One man threw up his blast-shield and reached for Spelter’s hand. “My name is Menelaus Peek. I am the oldest member of our group. We wanted to thank you for allowing us to come see your work site Mr. Spelter.” Spelter looked at Peek’s hand and shook it with a strong dust-bread grip. His hand was met with a soft arm mimicking strength. Both men were surprised. “We’ve all been looking forward to this for a while. My wife suggested we get involved with an artifact recovery group after our son passed away. And many of us have been saving for some time, years, a decade, even, to pay for the trip. So thank you.”
He thought about the familiar thank you and wondered whether there was a class on the Lomonosov's Drift where these people learned to interrupt your life in the nicest possible way. The rest of the way down, past thuds and grinding echoes and faraway drills the group talked about the machinery they imagined. They described the excavation sites they saw in projection and asked each other, in a voice loud enough for Spelter to hear, what the machines looked like. And what the sites were like. And where did the formations from the pictures come from, if not made by the ERVs Avagadro’s Number, Boyle’s Flask, or Capellini’s Notebook or other names they’d memorized.
When the elevator slowed the group could feel their bodies squeeze like an accordion. Spelter stopped the group as they exited into the excavation shaft. Before they walked through air locks Spelter said, “You don’t need to thank me Menelaus, I know how y’all feel. But remember, people do work here, they do live here, and some die here. Even if it looks like it’s harmless don’t touch it without asking and don’t pull anything out of the ground without thinking first understand. I want you to find what you are looking for; I do. But if you love your life, be responsible for it.”
They checked their air and their gravity boots, then double checked each other. Spelter opened the final gate and pressed his hand through a crack opening into a violet light. The translucent metal gate opened, revealing to their believing eyes a small corridor with rock painted red and orange with dancing light. The shadows of man and machine crept up the walls and retreated in amorphous flow, like waves on a beach. Before the first foot was planted the visitors felt their suits move as if they were insects caught in the vacuum of a vent system. The slow hum was so loud and disorienting each tourist was forced to kneel, eventually. Menelaus fought the sickness with every force in his nerves and muscles, but without finishing his fifth step the impact of terrestrial sound forced him to genuflect.
Deeper beneath the rock the noise and light faded, or as Menelaus believed their bodies acclimated, after a few moments. And with time each found their surface legs. Spelter guided the the starborn tourists quickly to the Trench and Hammer base camp. Every ten minutes or so he was forced to stop and answer a question. “Where did this formation come from?” “Is there any way this could be natural?” “How do you know these rocks aren’t imbued with special, unknown, properties?”
Dealing with the questions fatigued him. The tunnel had grown to more than thirty meters in diameter and become fixed with a steel bottom and automated trams moving to and through various elevator shafts. He hoped the LEDs were not functioning, but they were. He slowed his pace and awaited the inevitable. Menelaus, now acting as book-ready tour guide explaining to the others the mechanics of things none of them had seen before, tapped Spelter on the shoulder and asked about the stone escarpment and bas relief.
“Is that the fresco?” he whispered in Spelter’s ear.
“Most of us don’t call it that. It’s just a memorial.” Spelter pointed to the base of the formation. There was a dais with LEDs throwing light on objects too small to see from where the group was standing. Several tourists approached the railing and looked closer, leaning over, hand stretched just short of touching the rock. “Can we go closer?” said Menelaus.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“But we paid a lot of money to tour the site. We thought we could get a better look at anything we wanted.”
“You are here for the first time. So I’ll be patient with you and answer what I can. Though we don’t know who made it, and I can assure you we did not, there are tool marks. But we do not know what kind. And there was a detritus pit with remnants of things we’ve never identified.”
“Bones? Human?” Menelaus’ eyes widened.
“Many people died here to keep Lomonosov running. The formation; it’s important to the people who work here.”
“So there are others. Other craftsmen here before us I mean.”
“I think so.”
“I thought we were the only crafters. If there are others, why wouldn’t they have contacted us by now?” Said Menelaus. Spelter did not reply. He let the tourists look at the formation. That is why they came down. When they were done he brought them to the lower machine driven pit. They met the drillers and well-loggers, roughnecks they called themselves. They saw how solid methane was force separated from the liquid hydrocarbons using thermal precipitation. During the presentation there was little in the way of questions about process, a few obligatory grade school “Is it possible--?”s and “Do you think--?”s. But Spelter’s tone had silenced the starborn’s questions.
On the way back to the surface, Peek joined Spelter at the front of the group and without the others asked, “What do you think it is?”
“It’s beautiful. Isn’t that enough?”
On board the Lomonosov Drift’s the Akiba Design House was like a subterranean cavern. Echoes and shadows and footsteps and voices filled the darkness. Behind a dim blue light Vika Spelter stood at the holograph panel trying to make her key code work.
“I’m so sorry everyone. Please understand this is a new system and for some reason it’s not on my- My card doesn’t seem to recognize the designs I created. Maybe I should get tech support here.” She kept going until a woman’s voice interrupted.
“Slow down hon, just take your time. We don’t have anywhere to be right now. It’s your turn to impress.”
“Thank you-thank you-thank you.” she said in a tense but natural voice, “It really is a fun unique design and I bet anything you and your guests will love the look.”
She could hear another woman’s voice whisper in the dark, “I’m thinking we don’t have time to see too many more. The stupid thing either malfunctioned or the girl doesn’t know what she’s doing. Let’s get back to the two we liked and dump the rest of the portfolio meetings.”
Vika panicked. “Can I maybe take you back to the HQ Pod and show you what I made on the projection miniature? It won’t be walk through and you can’t interact with the design but it will show you what we can build for your son’s birthday party.”
“No. I honestly don’t think we would want that. Good day.”
“Master Spelter wait here. We need to have a talk.” said the familiar voice.
The clients exited the room. Vika raised the lights around the panel. Master Alina Antipova stood, arms crossed, tapping one foot and exhaling a red smoke which smelled of strawberries. “I want to talk to you about your recent client list. Did you bring it with you by chance?”
“I memorized it.”
“And
that’s the problem. It’s small enough to memorize. You’re an excellent ‘designer,’” Antipova put the word in air quotes, “but I have to take issue with your use of ergonomics. You see our clients not only expect the best possible beauty, but they expect functionality. Maybe more so than beautiful. Functionality is, one could argue, and I will since I’m your boss, the sine quo non of aesthetics.”
A bead of sweat rolled down Vika’s cheek. “I can do this you know I can. You hired me. Do you remember my designs for the Satriani-Vai Conservatory and Performance Hall on Bohr’s Last Laugh? Or what about Asimov’s Pen or the Gardiner Hubble Museum. The Planetary Exploration Society was more than pleased. Dr. Xuan promised you the next project, didn’t he? Didn’t he? Just one more chance. This domestic stuff, it’s not me. But it can be I know it.”
“You’re just not making me any money Vika. Why not let Clutch make the dough, you bake the bread?”
“Please; I can’t. I sat at home for three years while he was on Titan. And do you know how horrible it feels, being useless. When my friends asked me what I was doing do you know what I did? I lied.
“And each lie built on itself until I was terrified of being in the same room with people I had lied to. What if my past came up? ‘Oh she’s been working on the new core
The Storm Fishers and Other Stories Page 8
