by Jake Elwood
The bot pushed its way in, crowding them back, and looked back to make sure the door slid shut. Only then did it speak, in a smooth electronic voice. "Who are you, and why did you break into that house?"
"You first, buddy," said Cassie. "Who the hell are you?"
The bot planted hands on its metal hips. "You are in a poor bargaining position," it said. "I can summon the police to this room at a moment's notice. I, however, am nowhere near this hotel. You have nothing to threaten me with." It lifted an arm and wagged a metal finger at them. "Now. Who are you, and why did you burglarize that house?"
Cassie and Jerry looked at each other. By the expression on his face, he was as baffled as she was. "Look," she said to the bot. "We don't have a lot of time. We aren't answering any questions for a bot avatar of a complete stranger. Not without a little more information."
The bot met her gaze with an unblinking mechanical stare. "You first," it said.
"You're not with those bounty hunters, or whoever they were," Cassie said. "They would have come in shooting. You're not a cop. They would have already arrested us. You're a new player in this fascinating game I find myself stuck in." She leaned close to the bot, as if she could see something in that smooth artificial face. "Who are you?"
She tried to move around the bot, and it shifted to block her path. "You seem to want information as badly as we do," she said. "I think I want to meet you in person." She stepped back and did a slow twirl. "You can see I'm unarmed. So is he." She turned to Jerry. "Twirl for the bot." She glared at him until he complied. "You'll be safe, so long as you don't try anything," she said. "Come and see us in person. Then we'll talk."
The bot shook its head.
"We can't wait for you here," she told it. She turned to Jerry. "Where's a good place to meet? A restaurant, maybe?"
"Uh, there's a Moldonian place at the end of the next block."
"Great." She jabbed a finger at the robot's chest. "Meet us there. But don't dawdle. We need to get off-world."
The bot shook its head again. "Why would I agree to that?"
"Because it's the only way you have left to talk to us," she said, and stepped in close. Her hands slid around the bot's neck, and it raised its arms to fend her off. Her fingers closed on a thick cable running along the back of the bot's neck. She took a good hard grip and started to twist.
"What are you doing?" the bot said. It closed metal hands around Cassie's arms, but built-in safety protocols kept it from exerting much force. "Stop that!"
The cable tore loose with a sound of breaking plastic, and the bot went rigid. It tipped sideways, and Cassie leaned it against the wall. She edged past the bot, and Roger grabbed a duffel bag from beside the bed and followed.
They made it out of the hotel without further mishap. She almost told Jerry to call for his ship while she got them a taxi to the landing field, but her instincts told her to stick with the plan. She was intensely curious about the person controlling the bot. She sensed that he or she was not dangerous.
"I bloody hope I'm right," she muttered as she followed Jerry toward the restaurant.
"I bloody hope so too," he replied, and gave her a tense grin.
There was something strangely comforting about having him there, even if she was not yet entirely sure she could trust him. Well, the decision was made. She did her best to set aside her doubts as she followed him into the restaurant.
CHAPTER 21
When the old man walked through the front door of the restaurant and peered around, blinking, Cassie recognized him immediately. Jerry didn't straighten up until a man at another table said, "Hi, Monty."
Professor Montgomery Sykes was shorter than she'd imagined. The top of his head might have come to her nose if she'd been standing. He had a bit less hair than the last holo she'd seen of him. He was thin and stringy, his clothes hanging a bit slack as if he'd lost weight since they were made, but the eyes that peered out from under bristling white brows were clear and sharp. He scanned the room, and spotted Cassie and Jerry.
"The car," said Jerry.
"What?"
"That's how he found us. We took his car to the hotel."
She didn't bother answering. The professor reached their table and glowered down at them, his angular face sharp with disapproval.
"Professor," Cassie said. "We've travelled a long way to see you. Won't you sit down?"
He pulled a chair out and sat. "You've also broken into my home," he said.
Cassie spread her hands in a shrug. "Well, we drove off a band of bounty hunters who blew a couple of holes in your walls, so that's a point in our favor, right?"
He glared at her, and she fell silent. It was a relief when he switched the glare to Jerry, who met his gaze but squirmed a bit.
"Who are you?" the old man said at last. "Where have you come from, and why are you plaguing me?"
"My name is Cassie. This is Jerry. I'm a thief. I stole an artifact of the Ancients from a nasty man on Hesperus, and I've had bounty hunters chasing me ever since." She gestured at Jerry. "He was one of them. Now he's switched sides, because the people who are after me are truly vicious, and despite my profession, I'm actually reasonably nice."
Sykes lifted his eyebrows, skepticism plain on his face.
"There's something really significant about these artifacts," she said.
"Artifacts?" His voice was sharp. "Plural?"
"Yes." She could feel her cheeks getting warm. "I, ah, have two of them now."
The look he gave her made her feel like a naughty child caught stealing cookies. "I see."
"I've been hounded across the galaxy," she said. "People have been tortured, just because they know me. All because of these artifacts. They have some kind of huge importance. I want to know why."
He stared at her for a long time, his face inscrutable. Then his gaze switched to Jerry. "Is any of this true?"
Jerry shrugged. "I think so. I haven't seen the artifacts, or the torture, but the bounty on her is astonishing."
His gaze returned to Cassie. "And why did you come to see me, other than a desire to fill my retirement years with suffering?"
"To be fair," she said, "you fled your own home long before I arrived. You're already involved in this mess, aren't you? I only arrived on the planet today. How long have you been afraid for your life?"
He stared at her, not answering, but she could see the stress he was under reflected in his eyes.
"I'm not your enemy," she said. "I came here because I thought you might be able to help me understand what's going on. If I can help you understand what's going on too, well, that's an added bonus."
"What if I want nothing to do with you?" he said. "What if I get up and walk out of this restaurant? What will you do?"
"I'll probably make rude gestures at you behind your back," Cassie said. "Jerry and I will talk about how mean people get when they're old."
"I won't," said Jerry. "Cassie here has a cruel streak. It's very disturbing."
Sykes looked from Jerry to Cassie and back again. "Is that it?" he demanded. "You'll let me walk away?"
She nodded.
"All right, then." He crossed his arms over his thin chest. "The last people who came to ask me questions about the Ancients weren't quite so accommodating. They made it pretty clear that I'd be answering their questions if I knew what was good for me." A bleak look crossed his face. "The things they were asking about…" He shook his head. "What would you like to know?"
Cassie drew a PAD from her pocket. "Here are the two artifacts," she said. "I'm hoping you can tell me what they are. Why they're so important." She scanned the room. There weren't many customers, and none of them were paying the slightest attention. Still, she slid the PAD over a bit so that the professor was blocking it from most of the restaurant. When she was satisfied she touched a button and a holo of the egg appeared.
"This is the small one," she said. "I call it the egg. Here's the cube." She made the cube appear, floating above the PAD in 3D.<
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Sykes took the PAD from her and rotated it on the table, examining the artifacts from every side. He switched back and forth between the cube and the egg, then turned the projection off. Then he looked her in the eye.
"Well?" she demanded. "What are they?"
He shook his head. "I have no idea."
"What!"
"Well." He tapped his fingertips on the tabletop. "That might not be entirely true." He gestured at the PAD. "I can't tell much of anything by looking at holos. Even if I had the artifacts here in front of me, there's very little I could tell you without my equipment. Those two objects could be anything from self-refrigerating water bottles to very small spaceships." He made an apologetic gesture. "There's really no way to tell just by looking at them."
Cassie leaned forward. "But you have SOME idea, right?"
The look he gave her was a sharp one, and she suddenly found herself wishing she hadn't asked. "Yes," he said. "I have some idea. I can infer from context, based on the questions my last set of excited visitors had for me." He shifted in his chair, staring into space at something only he could see. "I think that it has to do with a terrible weapon."
"A weapon?" She peered at him. "What do you mean?"
"How much do you know about the Ancients?" He looked from Cassie to Jerry. "Either of you?"
Cassie shrugged. "I've read the Pedia entries. They were here, what, a million years ago? No one's ever found their homeworld, or if they have, all evidence is buried under a kilometer of sedimentary rock by now. Only a few artifacts remain."
Sykes waved a dismissive hand. "Your information is out of date. Listen." The bushy bars of his eyebrows drew together. "There's a reason we can't find the homeworld of the Ancients. It no longer exists." He made an exploding gesture with his hands. "The whole planet. Gone."
"Huh?" Cassie gaped at him. "I've never heard that. Where was it?"
"I can't say exactly," he said. "It's hard to prove what any given bunch of rubble used to be, after all. But much can be inferred. I can tell you roughly where they must have evolved." He took a PAD out of his pocket and worked the controls. A holo map of the galaxy appeared. He expanded the map, zoomed in on one quadrant of the galaxy, and expanded again until the map was almost the size of the tabletop.
"Here's Earth," he said, and a white circle appeared in the map. "Here's humanity's part of the galaxy." He circled his finger, marking a rough disk that covered almost half the quadrant, with Earth in the center. A touch of a button made the disk light up in pale white. "There have been explorers who've gone farther, but generally speaking, this is where you will find human settlements, human industry, and fairly detailed human knowledge."
Cassie nodded, a bit impatiently. Every school kid knew these basics.
"Here's where we've found significant signs of Ancients activity." He hit another button, and a much smaller disk lit up in blue, toward the edge of human-occupied space. "We can infer that the Ancients originated somewhere very close to the center of this blue circle. Here are the likely star systems." He touched a button and half a dozen stars glowed a darker blue. "My educated guess, though, is that the Ancients originated either here, or here."
Two of the dark-blue stars began to pulse.
"Why those two?" Cassie asked, intrigued in spite of herself. "Did you find evidence?"
"No evidence," he said. "Nowhere close to the center of Ancient space did we find any concrete indications that they had ever been there." He raised a finger and wagged it at her. "No, what we found was rubble."
"Rubble?" Cassie shook her head. "Sorry, doc, I'm not quite following you."
"Specifically," he said, "we found an asteroid belt."
Cassie nodded. "And…"
Sykes frowned. "You're a victim of a common cognitive fallacy," he said. "Our own home star system has an asteroid belt, and a significant asteroid field in a LaGrange point near Jupiter. That's one of the gas giants in the Sol system."
Cassie nodded impatiently.
"We've also found asteroid belts in many of the first star systems we ever explored. So we naturally assumed they were common."
"Of course," said Cassie. "Because they are common." She made a hurry-up-and-get-to-the-point gesture.
The professor gestured at the restaurant around them. "If you had never left this charming town, you might assume that the whole world was full of beige buildings. You have to travel a bit further afield to realize that beige buildings have a very specific, and significant, distribution."
Cassie stared at him, mystified.
"Here's a map of asteroid fields and significant asteroid clusters in the explored galaxy," he said, and touched the PAD. Sparkling green points of light appeared all over the map. "Can you see the pattern?"
She leaned forward, staring at the map. At first all she saw was chaos, a mad blend of stars and twinkling green points. She made herself keep looking. After a minute or so she stood so she could look down on the map from above.
The green twinkles were more sparse the farther you went from Earth, but that made sense. Everything close to Earth was better explored. Beyond the perimeter of human activity, data of any kind got pretty thin.
She focused on the distribution of green twinkles within the vast disk of human space. She stared, baffled. Then, with the suddenness of a light coming on in a dark room, she saw the pattern. Once she glimpsed it, it was unmistakable.
"Ancients space is full of asteroid belts," she said.
Sykes nodded, smiling. "Very good. Some of my undergraduates take weeks to see that."
She looked back down at the map. The pattern was easy to miss, because there were plenty of systems outside of Ancients space with asteroid belts, and plenty of system within the blue disk that had no asteroid belts or clusters whatsoever. But when you looked for it, it was obvious that the frequency of asteroids was much higher in areas where the Ancients had travelled.
"I don't understand." She sat down. "Why?" She made a frustrated gesture. "Did the Ancients cause asteroids?"
"Not them," said Jerry. His eyes were wide. "Not directly. Right, Professor?" He gestured at the map. "Those are Ancients planets, aren't they? Colonies and bases, or whatever they had." He swallowed, looking pale. "That's why there's so few remains." He peered into the star field, looking a bit sick. "Someone blew up their planets."
"It's impossible to be certain," Sykes said, his voice gentle. "But, yes. That's my theory. We can't find the homeworld of the Ancients because it no longer exists." He gestured at the map. "Every outpost. Every colony. Every base. Every research facility or trendy vacation spot. As you say, whatever it was that they had. Gone now. All gone."
Cassie's eyes went to the little white dot that represented Earth. The Sol system was just inside the blue ring that represented Ancients space. "We had a base, didn't we?" she said. "Back in Sol system. That's why we have asteroids."
Sykes nodded. "Maybe two bases," he said. "It's impossible to know the details after so long. But yes. I think they settled our system." He grinned mirthlessly. "Good thing they found a nice planet somewhere past the orbit of Mars. It would be a shame if they'd settled on Earth."
Cassie gulped.
"Who did it?" Jerry said.
Sykes shrugged. "You have to understand how little evidence we have to base all these suppositions. I can't give you a definitive answer."
"No," said Jerry, "but you have a theory, don't you?"
The professor inclined his head. "Guilty as charged." He sighed. "I think they met another intelligent species. Someone profoundly xenophobic. Someone who felt compelled to wipe the entire Ancients species from the galaxy, once the Ancients discovered them." He shrugged. "But it's just a theory. For all I know it was a civil war, or some kind of bizarre, civilization-wide mass suicide. Maybe they found a way to be even more greedy and irresponsible and short-sighted than humanity, and they made some energy source that eventually destroys whatever planet you build it on."
He shook his head. "A
lien race and doomsday weapon are my pet theory, though." His finger traced the border of Ancients space. "Probably somewhere here. Some place they barely discovered before the apocalypse."
"Wait a minute," said Jerry. "You said those other people were looking for a weapon." He gestured at the green twinkles in the star map. "All this. It happened, what? Eight hundred thousand years ago? Nine hundred thousand?"
Sykes nodded. "Something like that."
"Well, what kind of weapon could possibly still be functioning after all that time?" He waved his hands. "It's impossible!"
Sykes nodded. "But destroying a planet is impossible too." When Jerry frowned he said, "I once visited a tiny little outpost that the Ancients built in the Cerrana system. A place so small their enemies overlooked it. There was nothing left of the building that used to be there. You could see where a building used to be. The ground was slightly less eroded in an area perfectly square. But the building itself was long gone.
"There was a piece of machinery there. Utterly incomprehensible, like so much Ancients technology. A big thing the size of a sofa. We had no idea what it was for. Until it started to rain, that is." His eyes lit up at the memory. "The whole machine glowed when water landed on it. After the rain it went dormant again. So we got more water, and we started to experiment.
"It was a water purifier. It probably worked on a fairly large scale. There must have been water there, back so long ago. A stream, a lake, who knows what? The lowest part of the machine reacted with water. It released oxygen, it used the hydrogen for fuel, and it poured out a steady stream of perfectly pure water. Oh, it was something to see." He beamed, suddenly looking like a very young man. "After all this time, the machine is still there, and it still works. You could visit it yourself, and try the water. After almost a million years it's perfectly pure."
The corners of Jerry's mouth turned down. "I wish you hadn't told me that."
"All right," Cassie said. "The weapon might still exist. If someone believes that it might be real, it's significant enough to justify all this bother and trouble they've gone to." She thought of the death and destruction that had followed her since her misguided theft of the egg, and shuddered. "The question is, what do we do next?" She looked at Sykes. "There's nothing more you can tell me about my two artifacts?"
