The Dig

by Alan Dean Foster

  "You think I'd be here if I didn't think it was safe enough?"

  She considered only briefly before replying. "Yeah."

  "Well, I wouldn't," he responded crossly. "I promise: If it's not safe we won't try it." He extended a reassuring hand.

  She disdained the hand but rejoined him. The pyramid loomed ahead. "How are you going to know if it's safe?" The floor clicked hollowly under her boots. "You said there were two of these things."

  "That's right, and I left them fighting each other. They seemed evenly matched, unable to hurt each other too badly but unable or unwilling to break away either. With luck they'll still be snapping and kicking at each other. Or maybe they're both dead." He entered the tunnel.

  "Or maybe," she added, following dubiously, "they've recognized each other as long-lost relatives and they're squatting somewhere up ahead waiting for the one who reintroduced them to come back."

  "It's possible. But we're about due for a break, I think."

  She eyed him sourly. "Now there's a scientific approach."

  For a change, Low was right. When they paused at the entrance to the first chamber, there was no sign of the battling guardians. Not lingering to look for them, they hurried across the dangerous open area and into the next, narrower passageway. Robbins found the silence unnerving, but to Low it was bliss and balm.

  Low's Cocytan was still in the sarcophagus, but it was no longer sitting up silently surveying its surroundings. The vestigial wings or gills were not fluttering slowly against its back, and the wide intelligent eyes did not turn to inspect the visitors. Low was disappointed but not really surprised. Clearly the life crystals worked differently on different beings, and this one had been dead far longer than Brink. How much longer he could not imagine.

  Once again it lay on its back atop the impressive platform, arms placed straight at its sides. Mounting the platform to gaze down at it, Low found himself wishing he'd been more insistent with Brink. For all his abnormal preoccupation with the life crystals, the scientist's powers of observation and analysis were indisputably greater than Low's own. He would have had thoughts and ideas to offer.

  But Brink wasn't there, and he and Robbins were. They would have to puzzle things out on their own. One option he did not consider was leaving to bring Brink back forcibly. Not only might he fail, next time entering the pyramid and reaching the inner chamber might not prove so easy.

  Hesitant at first to approach too near, Robbins was now examining the length and breadth of the alien body. "It's dead."

  Low made a face. "Can't fool a reporter of your experience."

  She ignored the gentle sarcasm. "I wonder how many times those life crystals can revive the deceased?"

  "We're about to find out." Digging into a pocket, he brought out one of the green shards he had retained from Brink's private hoard. Leaning over an oddly jointed shoulder, he placed the glowing fragment atop the Cocytan's chest in much the same manner as before. The interior of the chamber suddenly filled with darting, swirling sparks, like bits of flame that had become estranged from their candle.

  Straining unsuccessfully to break through, one of the fretful, watching Cocytans drew back from reality. "This can't go on. They cannot continue to resurrect the Creator."

  "Why not?" A hundred thought-forms passed through the objector, with no harm to either.

  "Because the process is exhausting. The Creator had no patience when alive. In death it has less."

  "Would that we could share the experience," bemoaned a thousand-and-three. "Death is so physical."

  Alas, for every Cocytan present save one, death was no more attainable than the caress of a single sunbeam.

  Low took Robbins's arm and drew her back as the crystal melted into the broad chest. It being her first encounter with the remarkable phenomenon, she looked on in mute fascination.

  For the second time that day Cocytan eyes fluttered open, the beaklike mouth twitched, and an inhuman respiratory system manipulated air. For the second time the tall, muscular form raised itself laboriously to a sitting position. Turning slowly on the powerful, arching neck, the head stopped when eyes caught sight of the two humans. Under that forceful stare Robbins unconsciously moved a little closer to Low, who, without thinking, put an arm around her waist. This time she didn't shrug him off.

  The resurrection was not a miracle, only a phenomenon so far beyond the capability of Earthly science as to seem like one, an in vivo validation of Clarke's law. Certainly it was such to the Cocytan. Rather than revel in its revivification, it remained motionless atop the platform, plainly less interested in its restored life than its tiny audience. Though he had no effective basis for such an interpretation, Low thought the alien looked bored.

  "Try," he whispered to her.

  Taking a hesitant step forward, Maggie let her recently acquired knowledge flow from her lips. Though it was the reaction and response they'd hoped for, it was still something of a shock when the Cocytan turned its gaze on her alone and replied.

  "I can understand it." Muted awe underlined her reaction. "Not perfectly, but I can understand. I guess I didn't spend enough time at the inducer."

  "Talk to it," Low encouraged her.

  She looked back at him uncertainly. "What'll I say?"

  "Don't ask me. You're the journalist. You've done interviews before."

  She swallowed. "This is a little different, you know."

  "It doesn't matter," he murmured impatiently. "Just start a conversation. Ask if it knows where more of the round plates are. Ask it how we can get home. Ask it—"

  "I can't ask it anything," she hissed, "if you don't shut up." Low obediently subsided.

  It was extraordinary to hear the guttural singsong flow from the mouth of Maggie Robbins, more remarkable still to see and hear the Cocytan reply. She did her best to translate for her companion.

  "I introduced us. In response it says it's called the Creator. That's the name, or appellation, that its kind bestowed upon it. As near as I can translate, anyway."

  "Impressive moniker. Keep going."

  She spoke again, and for the second time the entity responded without prompting. "It doesn't think so. In fact, I get the distinct impression it's not happy with the title. But it's short, and it says that it's real name is much too long and complicated for me to handle. I'm not about to argue the point."

  "The plates," Low urged her. "Ask it about the plates."

  But the Cocytan had its own conversational agenda and refused to be led. Robbins was compelled to explain not only who but what they were, and how they had come to be marooned on Cocytus. After a while, she was given a chance to translate for Low.

  "It hasn't been dead so long that it's forgotten its sense of curiosity. It is somewhat interested in us." She turned back to the alien, which was speaking again.

  "I cannot tell you how to reactivate the asteroid-ship, as you call it. I have no interest in that."

  "But we have." Within the context of the complex Cocytan grammar she tried to emphasize the importance of the request. "This isn't our world, isn't our home."

  "It is no longer mine either," the entity replied. "Or any other thinking being's. It is a place of cognitive death, where all that survives of the thinking are machines. Long may they thrive." The bitterness of the alien's words came through clearly. "They were built well. In the case of one, far too well."

  "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Tell me what happened here. Where are all the others? What happened to this world?"

  The vestigial wings fluttered slightly, and a great sigh came from deep within the massive chest. "Very well. I will tell you. I will do my best to keep my words simple and straightforward so that you may be sure to understand. And when I have finished, I would ask that you leave me to my chosen destiny and disturb me no more."

  She nodded understandingly. Low was close and anxious.

  "Well?"

  "It's going to explain some things," she told him. "In return, it wants something from
us."

  He frowned. "What could it want from us?"

  Bright blue eyes stared back at him. "Death."

  CHAPTER 18

  The questions flowed fluently. It was startling how easy it was, as if she'd known the language since childhood. The words poured out of her, her mind managing the difficult translation effortlessly. Only when she encountered a word or term that had not been imparted to her by the Educator did she have trouble. It was as if she were performing simultaneous translation from the Russian with the odd word interspersed in Quechua.

  "Who are you? Not a name. Tell me an individual."

  "As I told you, I am called Creator, a designation I did not choose for myself. Builder would have been more appropriate. Designer, Conceptualizer. I should prefer Engineer."

  She remembered to translate for Low. "It's an engineer."

  "That's something." Low allowed himself to feel hopeful.

  "You've been dead," she observed, unselfconsciously restating the obvious.

  "Pleasantly. Soon I will be again, if you will stop interfering. I long ago grew tired of life, the follies attendant upon it and the absurdities to which even the supposedly intelligent are heir."

  Low responded to Maggie's translation. "Tell it we're sorry to have disturbed its ... rest. We respect its wishes to remain dead and promise not to revive it again. Tell it we both share strong desires. It wants not to live and we very badly want to go home. But we can't do that without help. We didn't ask to be brought here anymore than it asked to be revived."

  Robbins nodded and translated. When she'd finished, fathomless alien eyes shifted slightly and came to rest on the Commander.

  "Yet you are here. I see that some background is in order.

  "Long ago, this world of—I will use your far simpler nomenclature for it—Cocytus was a strong and vigorous place. We discovered how to bend the material world to our needs, much as you are learning to do."

  Robbins frowned. "How do you know that? You know nothing of our world."

  It turned back to her. "You would not be here now if you were not technologically inclined. Only a technically advancing species would have the ability to reach one of the Messengers."

  "Messengers? Is that what you call the asteroid?"

  "Patience, little biped. We believed that our society and philosophy had matured along with our technology. We found a way not to exceed the speed of light but to bypass it. I cannot think of a simpler way to put it and I assure you the technical description would be beyond your comprehension."

  "That's for sure," she responded. "I can't even program my VCR."

  "We chose not to utilize this discovery for personal travel because search times were very long. Integral to the process is a boomerang effect. So while out-search travel times are quite long, returns take comparatively little time. Otherwise you would have aged greatly during your journey.

  "We sent out many such probes to systems that harbored planets and that we hoped might also prove home to other intelligences. It is a vast universe in which to be alone and we avidly sought the companionship of other species. Each probe was disguised, camouflaged, as a natural phenomenon so as not to alarm the local inhabitants."

  She took a moment to translate for Low.

  "So as not to alarm, hmmm? Had the opposite effect on us. But if it hadn't, we sure wouldn't have responded as quickly. Go on."

  The Cocytan continued. "Only a species sufficiently advanced to leave behind the gravity of its homeworld would have the capability to investigate and trigger a Messenger. Once activated, each was designed to return here with its discoverers. This complex of islands was specially designed to serve as a greeting place, where representatives of other species could be met in surroundings that would intrigue but not overwhelm them."

  "That explains exhibits like the museum and the planetarium," Low commented when Robbins had translated for him.

  She nodded agreement. "Not to mention the language instructor. I see the point. If you're welcoming people from a primitive tribe, it's a lot kinder to introduce them first to a simple village instead of taking them off a plane at Kennedy Airport."

  "The map spire. Ask it about the map spire." She complied.

  "A means of showing not only our planet, but our immediate stellar vicinity, as well as the relationship between it and the visitor's homeworld."

  Low muttered to himself. "Then Earth was in there someplace. Ludger and I just didn't know where to look."

  "What?" A confused Maggie tried to make sense of his words.

  "Nothing. I'll tell you later. Go on."

  "We had acquired vast knowledge," the Cocytan continued, "which we were eager to share with others, if they could be found. All intelligences yearn for the company of others. In a boundless cosmos cognitive thought is a precious commodity, to be nurtured and cultivated wherever encountered. Sparks in a void must perforce stand together against the encroaching darkness. But I speak of times long vanished."

  So saying, the Cocytan dropped its head in a gesture that was startlingly humanlike, though whether it meant the same or something completely different, its audience had no way of knowing.

  "But something happened." Maggie's voice had unconsciously hushed. She was overcome by the Cocytan's scale of time and place. "Some disaster or cataclysm."

  The alien raised a hand and gestured with surprisingly delicate fingers. "Say rather, a tragedy. Of our own making. A consequence of our drive to achieve, to surpass, to exceed."

  "What happened to everyone else?" she asked. "Yours is the only body we've found preserved."

  "'Preserved.'" The Cocytan ran one hand along the edge of the high platform. "None of this was my doing, nor was it by my choice. I knew nothing of it. I wished nothing more than a traditional departure from the realm of the living. I wanted to die. Instead, this was done to me."

  As the Cocytan spoke and he waited for Maggie's translation, Low could not help but notice that the flickering lights had increased in both number and intensity. He fancied he heard a voluminous, ghostly moan and had to smile at the strength of his own imagination.

  "This is the longest," observed a dozen thought-forms, "that the creator has spoken with any visitors."

  "It does not matter," declared sixty-three others. "Nothing will happen. It will end the same as before, and when it is over, these travelers will add their proteins and body fluids to those of their predecessors. Nothing will have changed."

  "Nothing will have changed," lamented a hundred thousand of the forlorn.

  "It happened after the first probes had been sent out to search for intelligent life on other worlds." The Cocytan stared blankly at the ceiling, recalling. "While they were in transit, a significant development occurred in our society. Not a natural calamity, as you propose. We had progressed beyond being subject to the vagaries of climate and geology. Furthermore, we had acquired control over our bodies. Life spans had been extended to the maximum of which our physical forms were capable.

  "Yet for many, even this was not enough. As sometimes happens in science, several profound discoveries in a number of unrelated disciplines took place almost simultaneously.

  "First, the life crystals, as you call them, were synthesized. At the time, they were considered to be the ultimate product of high Cocytan technology."

  The Creator's expression remained unreadable. While Robbins had learned how to interpret Cocytan speech, she remained woefully ignorant of facial contortions and body language. Not that the Creator was especially expressive anyway.

  Low found himself glancing frequently over his shoulder, only to find nothing staring back at him. There were only the elaborately decorated walls and the dancing lights. He forced himself to pay attention to the interview. While he couldn't understand a word of it, it was fascinating to watch Maggie and the Cocytan converse.

  "These crystals, what are they?" she asked.

  "For one thing, they are not crystals in the usual sense. Their appearance is incidental to th
eir composition. Internally, they are very uncrystallike. The luminous outer sheath and inner crystalline one mask individual organic mechanisms of incredible complexity. Think of them as tiny but complete hospitals, containing everything that is needed to repair another organic life-form. With the development of the crystals it was no longer necessary for the sick or injured to travel in search of medical care. Complete treatment could be inserted into their own bodies.

  "Each crystal incorporates the ability to diagnose as well as to perform any necessary medical work. Resurrection of the deceased merely constitutes a more difficult but, as you have seen, not impossible repair. It is simply a matter of rearranging and reinvigorating the appropriate molecules."

  "It works on humans too," she informed it.

  "The crystal's powers of examination are considerable."

  "I can see something like that working on the recently deceased," she remarked, "but with someone who's been dead as long as yourself, I'd think the brain patterns would have faded beyond hope of recovery."

  "What are you asking it now?" Low demanded to know.

  She waved him off. "Just the basics, Boston. Hush now, or I won't be able to understand." Fuming silently at his inability to follow the conversation, the Commander went silent.

  "Learning how to preserve the dead," the Cocytan explained, "is a necessary prelude to discovering how to revive them. That includes methods for the preservation of brain patterns. Although it was not my field, I believe it has to do with maintaining certain electrical flows in the absence of normal biological activity. As you can see, I was given the finest handling of which our biologists and physicists were capable. I was, as I have already mentioned, not consulted in this."

  "But you're the only one." Robbins made it a statement, not a question.

  "Not at all. The museum spire is full of such exhibits, if only you knew how to activate them. There are many that can be restored to life."

  "No, I mean, you're the only Cocytan. The only preserved representative of the dominant species. At least, you're the only one we've found."