Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know.” Stupid remark.

  They went outside again, just the two of them, and inspected the asteroid. They floated above the rockscape, using Marcel’s go-pack to get around.

  Much of the net was concealed by a layer of dust. The metal links appeared to be made of the same material as the shafts. They were only a couple of centimeters thick and were linked with crosspieces at lengths of about three-quarters of a meter.

  They stopped to examine the connecting plate and were pleasantly surprised to discover a series of engraved symbols. All the characters were joined, in the manner of cursive writing. “Eventually,” Beekman said, “I’d like to take this inside. Take it home with us.”

  It was big. Marcel measured it with his eye and concluded it wouldn’t fit through the cargo airlock. “We might have to cut it in half,” he said.

  “Whatever’s necessary—” They drifted above it and looked back the way they’d come, down the long straight line of the assembly toward the heart of Deepsix.

  They took samples of everything, of the rock and the dust, of the net, of the plate. When they were finished they went back inside and had some coffee. It was after 2:00 A.M. ship time, November 27.

  Beekman suggested the unknown architects had developed quantum technology, and the skyhook had simply become obsolete. Marcel was too tired to care. But just as he was getting ready to head for his quarters, Bill broke in: “Captain, we now have the satellite scans you requested of the coastal mountain range.”

  “Okay, Bill.” Ordinarily he’d have asked to look. But not at this hour. “Anything interesting?”

  “There is a structure of substantial dimensions on one of the peaks.”

  The door opened almost at the first touch of the laser. Beyond lay shelved walls and a vaulted ceiling. Hutch played her light over a bare wooden table. Shadowy figures looked back out of alcoves.

  “Bingo,” said Toni.

  Statues. There were six alcoves, and at one time there had been six figures. Five lay broken and scattered in the dust that covered the floor. One remained.

  The survivor resembled a falcon. But it stood upright, in a vest and trousers that suggested pantaloons. A medallion of illegible design hung about its neck. It reminded Hutch of Horus. “You think that’s what they looked like?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” said Nightingale. “It would fit. Little creatures, descended from birds.”

  Whatever might once have filled the shelves was gone.

  She flashed pictures to Wendy. Hutch half expected to hear from Marcel, but it was early morning on the ship. In the interests of diplomacy, she also sent a picture to MacAllister, who was having brunch in the Star lander.

  He took it rather calmly, she thought, but made it a point to thank her and ask that he be kept informed. The manner of it implied that he thought it trivial.

  The room, she suspected, had been a study. Or perhaps a library.

  Nightingale agreed. “I wish we could read their scrolls.”

  Indeed. What would a history not be worth?

  The other figures had apparently all been representations of the falcon, in various poses. They gathered up the pieces, packed each of the six separately to the extent they were able, took them out to the lander, and stowed them in the cargo hold.

  The snow had stopped and by late morning the last clouds cleared away. The environment was now suitable, MacAllister judged, for the interview.

  Wetheral had loaded several pieces of the doll-like furniture, a couple of cabinets, a chair, and a table into the cargo section. Everything was badly decomposed, but that didn’t really matter. TransGalactic could process the stuff easily enough and make them look as if they were antiques in exquisitely restored condition. The details wouldn’t matter as long as some part of the original remained.

  Wetheral had even made off with a javelin. It had an iron tip, and MacAllister wondered whether it had ever actually been used in combat. He tried to visualize hawks in trousers flying about trying to stab each other with these pea-stickers. The only thing more absurd than someone else’s civilization, he thought, is someone else’s religious views.

  Casey had brought a couple of folding chairs along and had planned to sit out in the open with him while they talked, with the tower as a backdrop. Or possibly even sit inside the tower.

  “The atmosphere’s all wrong for any of that,” he told her. “We don’t want to be outside. Either in the building or in the snow.”

  “Why not?”

  “It looks cold, Casey.”

  “What does the audience care?”

  “If we look cold, your audience will not get caught up in the conversation.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m quite serious.”

  “But they’ll know we’re inside e-suits.”

  “What do they know about e-suits? Only what they see in the sims. They’ll see the snow; they’ll see you and me sitting there in shirtsleeves. They won’t see the e-suit. It doesn’t look cozy.”

  “I want cozy?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She sighed. “All right. So what do we do? Sit in the lander?”

  “Correct. Roughing it, but not too rough.”

  She gave him a tolerant smile, and he knew what she was thinking. They were too far from the tower. In fact, the tower was partially hidden behind the other spacecraft. “I’ll get Wetheral to move us closer.”

  “I’ve a better idea,” said MacAllister. Two of the women, Hutchins and Toni What’s-Her-Name, were carrying a table out to their spacecraft. He studied Hutchins and realized that her problem was that she had no sense of humor. She was certainly not the sort of woman one would want to have around on a long-term basis. Took herself far too seriously, and seemed utterly unaware that she was a lightweight.

  The table was big, and they were struggling. He excused himself, got down out of the vehicle, walked over and magnanimously asked if he could help. Hutchins glanced suspiciously at him. “Yes,” she said finally. “If you’d like.”

  It was a rectangular table, so old it was impossible to be sure what the original composition material might have been. It was large, considering the scale of the other furniture, and probably would have seated twelve of the natives. A decorative geometry that might have represented leaves and flowers was carved into its sides.

  Casey joined the party and lent a hand.

  The cargo section was so full there was a question whether it would fit, but after some rearranging they got it in.

  “Thanks,” Hutchins said. “That turned out to be heavier than it looked.”

  “Glad to help.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “Was there something you wanted to ask me?”

  Not a complete dummy, he decided. “As a matter of fact, I could use your assistance. Casey and I are going to record an interview. I was wondering if you’d allow us the use of your lander.”

  “In what way?” She looked at him, looked at the cargo bay loaded with artifacts, and showed him she didn’t much approve. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Just sit in it and talk. It’s warm and out of the snow, but we still get the atmosphere of the dig. And a perfect view of the tower.”

  “You can’t close it up,” she said.

  He guessed that she meant they could not seal off the cabin and repressurize it. “We don’t need to. The audience won’t know the difference.”

  She shrugged. “You can have an hour. After that we’ll need it back.”

  “That’s good. Thank you very much.”

  She turned away. Ridiculous woman.

  They climbed into the cabin, and Casey removed her link, tied a microscan into it, put it on a tray, and aimed it at her subject. She set up two more in strategic locations.

  There were artifacts in the rear of the cabin, which would provide additional atmosphere. MacAllister placed himself so that a weapons rack was behind him, and the tower was visible through hi
s window. Casey was moving things out of the way in order to get shots from different angles.

  Something large and dark rose out of the trees to the west, flapped in a large uncertain circle, and descended again. Clumsy creature, whatever it was. Yes, he thought, let’s have Armageddon for this cold world and all its living freight.

  Hutch had turned away from MacAllister and was standing at the tower entrance talking to Nightingale when Chiang came on the circuit. “Hutch,” he said, “we might have something else.”

  “What?” she asked. “What is it?”

  “Looks like an inscription. It’s in pieces, but it’s writing of a sort. We’ve also broken through into an open corridor.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Back of the library.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She descended staircases and entered the tunnels, crossed the armory, and kept going until she saw lights. Toni and Chiang were examining a wall covered with symbols.

  Toni looked up, waved, and moved off to one side to provide Hutch a clear view. The wall had partially collapsed, and several large pieces lay on the ground. But it was covered with lines of engraved characters, almost all quite legible.

  “Lovely,” said Hutch.

  They were not pictographs, and there was a limited number of individual symbols, suggesting she was indeed looking at an alphabet. Furthermore, the text was divided into sections.

  Paragraphs.

  There was an ethereal quality about the script. It reminded her of Arabic, with its curves and flow. “You’ve got pictures?” she asked.

  Toni patted her microscan. “Everything.”

  Several sections of the script, at the top, were more prominent than the text that followed. “They might be names,” suggested Chiang.

  “Maybe. It could be a commemorative of some sort. Heroes. Here’s who they were, and there’s what they did.”

  “You really think so?” asked Toni.

  “Who knows?” said Hutch. “It could be anything.”

  The beam from Toni’s torch fell on a shard, a piece of pottery. “We really need time to excavate,” Hutch said. And to move out into the city, to find the kinds of tools these people used, to unearth their houses, dig up more icons. Maybe get the answers to such basic questions as whether they used beasts of burden, how long their life spans were, what kind of gods they worshiped. “Okay,” she continued. “Let’s get this stuff upstairs, then we’ll come back and see what else we’ve got.”

  They cut the central section out of the wall. Chiang tried to move it, but it was too heavy to handle in the confined quarters. “Let it be for now,” said Hutch. “We’ll figure it out later.”

  He nodded, picked up a couple of the fragments, and headed back. Toni collected two more, leaving Hutch to try to gather together the smaller pieces.

  Nightingale stood in the tower entry and tried to turn his mind to other things. He couldn’t help glancing up every few minutes at the Wildside cabin, where MacAllister sat in his officious manner, gesturing and making pronouncements. Suddenly, the great man turned in his seat and looked directly at him. He got up, moved through the cabin, climbed down onto the ground, and started in his direction. Nightingale braced himself for a fight.

  “Nightingale,” he said as soon as he’d gotten close, “I wonder if I could ask a favor?”

  Nightingale glared at him. “What do you want?”

  “We’re going to be using this whole area as a background. Could I persuade you to stay out of sight? It works better if there’s a complete sense of desolation.”

  Casey snapped the recorder back on, smiled nervously at him, and resumed the interview: “In a week, Mr. MacAllister, Deepsix won’t even exist anymore. It’s cold and bleak, and that stone tower behind you is apparently the only building in this entire world. What brings you to this forlorn place?”

  “Morbid curiosity, Casey.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “I’m never anything but serious. Why else would anybody come here? I’d be the last one to want to sound morose, but loss is the one constant we all have to deal with. It’s the price of living. We lose parents, friends, relatives. We lose the place we grew up in, and we lose the whole circle of our acquaintances. We spend ungodly amounts of time wondering whatever happened to former teachers and lovers and scoutmasters.

  “Here, we’re losing a world. It’s an event absolutely unique in human experience. An entire planet, which we now know has harbored intelligence of a sort and which still serves as a refuge for life, is going to end. Completely and finally. After these next few days, there will exist nothing of it other than what we can carry off.”

  She nodded, telling him what he already knew, that this was good stuff. “You had an opportunity,” she said, “to tour the tower earlier today. What were your impressions? What about it did you find significant?”

  MacAllister glanced meaningfully toward the structure. “We know that whoever built it left a telescope behind, as if to say to us, we also wanted the stars.

  “But they’re lost, Casey. They probably had their own versions of Homer and Moses, Jesus and Shakespeare, Newton and Quirt. We saw the blowguns, and we know they built walls around their cities, so we can assume they fought wars. They must have had their Alexandrian campaigns, their Napoleon and Nelson, their civil wars. Now, everything they ever cared about is to be lost forever. That’s a disaster of quintessential proportions. And I think it’s worth coming to see. Don’t you?”

  “I suppose you’re right, Mr. MacAllister. Do you think anything like this could happen to us?”

  He laughed. “I’d like to think so.”

  “Surely you’re joking.”

  “I’d be pleased to believe that when the time comes for us to make our exit, we will do so as gracefully as the inhabitants of this world. I mean, the blowguns tell us all we need to know about them. They were undoubtedly every bit as perfidious, conniving, hypocritical, and ignorant as our own brothers and sisters. But it’s all covered up. The disaster gives them dignity they did not otherwise earn. Everybody looks good at his funeral.

  “We’re not even sure what they looked like. Consequently, we’ll remember them with a kind of halo shining over their ears. People will speak of the Maleivans in hushed voices, and with great respect. I predict that some fool in Congress or in the Council will want to erect a monument in their honor. When in fact the only thing we can be sure they achieved was that they made it to oblivion without getting caught in the act.”

  During the course of his life, Nightingale couldn’t recall having ever hated anyone. Other than MacAllister. In the moment that the editor had asked Nightingale to step inside the tower, he had searched his mind for the correct riposte, the cutting remark that would slice this walking pomposity into his component parts.

  But nothing had come to mind. You buffoon, he might have said, and MacAllister would have flicked him away. Windbag. Poseur.

  The pilot of the Star lander walked past him with another pile of sticks. “Chair,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Hutch said I could have it.”

  “Okay.”

  In the end he had meekly complied with the request and stood away from the scan’s line of sight. But he really couldn’t do his job properly, stowed inside the tower, couldn’t see everything he needed to, especially couldn’t see the strip of trees from which the biped cat had emerged. So he came out every few minutes, in a small act of defiance, walked about for a bit, and then retired back inside.

  He was following the conversations in the tunnels. Toni, hauling chunks of inscribed stone to the surface, announced that she’d found a coin. “What kind?” Nightingale asked, excited. “What’s on it?”

  He was standing outside watching the trees. Watching Wetheral.

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  And while he waited, the ground moved.

  It rolled beneath him. MacAllister and the woman in the lander stopped talking and t
urned to stare at him. Wetheral paused midway between the tower and his own spacecraft and stood with the chair held absurdly over his head.

  The earth shrugged and threw Nightingale flat into the snow. He heard frightened cries on the allcom, watched the Wildside lander begin to lean over on one tread until the tread collapsed. The earth shook again, briefly. The ground and the sky seemed to be waiting. More was coming; he knew damned well more was coming.

  He thought about retreating into the tower. But that would be stupid. Why put rocks over his head? Instead he moved out away from it, but had gone only a few steps when another shock hit. Big one this time. He went down again. A ripple ran across the landscape. The snow broke apart under Wetheral’s feet. The pilot tried to run, absurdly still holding the chair. The ground ripped open and he fell in. Disappeared. His lander tilted, and it, too, slid into the hole.

  All this was accomplished in an eerie silence. If Wetheral had protested, screamed, called for help, he’d been off-channel. Now a roar broke over Nightingale’s ears, like an ocean crashing into a rocky headland, and the world continued to tremble. The earth shook and quieted. And shook again. An enormous stone block slammed into the snow a few meters away. He looked up, saw that it had broken off the roof, saw also that the tower had begun to lean to one side.

  The hole into which Wetheral and his lander had fallen widened. Gaped. It was becoming a chasm.

  MacAllister was sitting in the Wildside lander staring at him, or maybe at the tower, with his eyes wide. Now, thought Nightingale with a sense of grim satisfaction, let’s see how it goes with you.

  Marcel came on the link and was demanding to know what was happening. Chiang reported collapsing walls. A cloud of dust rolled out of the tower. Hutch was on the allcom telling everyone to get outside.

  Kellie, who’d been on the upper level, climbed through a window, saw him, and dropped to the ground. It was a long fall but she seemed unhurt. “Did they come up yet?” she asked.

  Hutch was still on the link, saying something. He needed a moment to make it out.

  “Randy, you there?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “I’m with Kellie.” Just then Chiang staggered out through the entrance.