Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  They had not seen any kind of structure since leaving the tower. Nightingale gave up and reached for his staff. MacAllister saw that he was having difficulty and started over to help. “It’s okay, Gregory,” he said. “I can manage.”

  MacAllister stopped midway. “My friends call me Mac.”

  “I didn’t know you had any friends.” He collected a lamp and turned it on.

  Mac looked at him with a half smile, but there was no sign of anger.

  “What kind of arch?” Nightingale asked Kellie.

  “Curved. Over a pair of iron gates. Small ones. Pretty much rusted away. But there are some symbols carved into it. Into the arch.”

  Nightingale, leaning on his staff, started for the woods. “Do they look like the ones back at the tower?”

  “Could be,” said Hutch. “Hard to tell.”

  Metal squealed. Somebody had opened the gate. “Why don’t we see what’s inside?” said Chiang.

  It hurt to walk. MacAllister sighed loudly. “You ought to just take it easy. They find anything important, they’ll let us know.”

  “They already found something important, Gregory. Maybe this thing was a country estate of some sort. Who knows what’s inside?”

  “Why do you care? It’s not your field.”

  “I’d like very much to know who the original inhabitants were. Wouldn’t you?”

  “You want an honest answer?”

  “I can guess.”

  “I’m sure you can. I know who the original inhabitants were. They were very likely little hawk-faced guys with blowguns. They murdered one another in wars, and, judging from that tower back there, they were right out of our Middle Ages. Hutch would like to know what gods they worshiped and what their alphabet looked like. I say, who gives a damn? They were just another pack of savages.”

  Nightingale arrived at the wall, and it was indeed brickwork. It was low, plain, worn, buried in shrubbery and vines. He wondered what kind of hands had constructed it.

  He advanced until he’d reached the gates. They were made of iron, originally painted black, he thought, although now they were heavily corroded and it was hard to be sure. Nevertheless, one of them still moved on its hinges.

  They were designed for ornamentation rather than security. Individual bars were molded in the shape of leaves and branches. The artwork seemed mundane, something Nightingale’s grandmother might have appreciated. Still, it was decorative, and he supposed that told them something more about the inhabitants.

  He heard MacAllister coming up behind him. He sounded like an elephant in deep grass. The light from his lamp fell across the arch.

  It was curved brickwork. The symbols that Kellie had mentioned were engraved on a flat piece of stone mounted on the front. Nightingale thought it was probably the name of the estate. “Abandon hope,” he said.

  “Keep out,” offered MacAllister.

  The ground was completely overgrown. If there’d ever been a trail or pathway, nothing was left of it now.

  They passed through the gate and saw the others inspecting a small intact building, not much larger, Nightingale thought, than a children’s playhouse. It was wheel-shaped, constructed entirely of gray stone, with a roof that angled down from a raised center.

  He could see a doorway and a window. Both were thick with vegetation.

  Chiang cut his way through to the entrance. He cleared away some of the shrubbery, and they filed in, under the usual low ceiling. First the women, then Chiang, and then Nightingale.

  The interior consisted of a single chamber and an alcove. In both, vegetative emblems, flowers and branches and blossoms, were carved into baked clay panels that covered the walls. A stone table dominated the far end of the chamber.

  The place smelled of decay. MacAllister finally squeezed through the door and squatted so he wouldn’t have to stand bent over. “It doesn’t look all that old,” he said. He put one hand on the floor to steady himself.

  Chiang stood by the table. “What do you think?” he asked, pressing his fingers against it. “Is it an altar?”

  The other races of whom humans had knowledge had all established religions early in their history. Nightingale recalled reading Barashko’s classic treatise, Aspects of Intelligence, in which he’d argued that certain types of iconography were wired into all of the known intelligent species. Sun-symbols and stars, for example, inevitably showed up, as did wings and blood-symbols. There was often a martyred god. and almost everyone seemed to have developed the altar. “Yes,” Hutch said. “I don’t think there’s any question that’s what it is.”

  It was rough-hewn, a pair of solid blocks fastened together with bolts. Hutch played her lamp on it, wiped down the surface, and studied it.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Nightingale.

  “Stains. Altars imply sacrifices.”

  “Oh.”

  “Like here.”

  Everyone moved forward to look. Nightingale walked into a hole, but Kellie caught him before he fell. There were stains. “Could be water,” he said.

  Hutch scraped off a sample, bagged it, and put it in her vest.

  MacAllister shifted his weight uncomfortably and looked around. He was bored.

  “It’s on a dais,” said Kellie. Three very small steps led up to the altar.

  MacAllister stood, more or less, and walked closer. “The chapel in the woods,” he said. “What do you suppose became of the god-in-residence?”

  Hutch flashed her light into a corner. “Over here.” She got down on a knee, scooped at the debris and dirt, and lifted a fragment of blue stone. “Looks like part of a statue.”

  “Here’s more,” said Chiang.

  A score of pieces were scattered about. They set them on the altar and took pictures from a variety of angles, which would allow Bill to put them together.

  “The fragments are from several distinct figures,” the AI reported back a few minutes later. “We have one that’s approximately complete.”

  “Okay,” said Hutch. “Can we take a look?”

  Marcel sent the image through Kellie’s link and it blinked on.

  Nightingale had seen right away that the statuary had not depicted the hawk-image they’d seen back at the tower. In fact the figure that appeared could hardly have been more different: it had no feathers. It did have stalked eyes. A long throat. Long narrow hands ending in claws. Four digits. Eggshell skull. Ridged forehead. No ears or nostrils. Lipless mouth. Green skin texture, if the coloring had not faded. And a blue robe.

  It looked somewhat like a cricket.

  “What happened to the hawks?” asked Nightingale.

  “One or the other is probably mythical,” said Hutch.

  “Which? Which is mythical and which represents the locals?”

  She frowned at the image. “I’d say the hawk is mythical.”

  “Why?” asked Chiang.

  “Because,” said MacAllister, “the hawk has some grandeur. You wouldn’t catch hawks imagining heroes or gods who looked like crickets.”

  Nightingale exhaled audibly. “Isn’t that a cultural prejudice?”

  “Doesn’t make it any less valid. Prejudices aren’t always invalid, Randy.”

  The robe was cinctured down the middle, open at the breast. Its owner wore sandals, and it carried a rod whose top was broken off. A staff. The right arm was also broken, at the elbow. Had it been there, Nightingale was certain, it would have been lifted toward the sky. In prayer. In an effort to invoke divine aid. In a signal to carry on.

  Among the missing pieces were an antenna, a leg, a chunk of what could only have been a thorax. But the head was intact. And it struck Nightingale that, despite MacAllister’s comment, the creature did possess a certain dignity.

  “What do you think?” asked Hutch.

  The question was directed at him, but MacAllister answered it. “It’s not bad workmanship,” he said.

  There was much in the image that spoke to Nightingale. The creature had endured loss an
d was making its appeal, or perhaps was simply resigning itself. To what? he wondered. To the common death, which is the starting point for all religions? To the everlasting cold, which had become part of the natural order?

  “They would have been worth knowing,” said Hutch.

  Nightingale agreed.

  He was the last to leave.

  They’d put a couple of the pieces into artifact bags, taken a final look around, and filed out. Hutch paused at the doorway and turned back toward him. “Coming?” she asked.

  “They’ve probably been dead a few centuries,” he said.

  She gazed at him and seemed worried. He suspected he looked pale and gray. “There may be a few survivors left. Out in the hills somewhere.”

  Nightingale nodded. “But their civilization’s gone. Everything of consequence that they ever did is lost. Every piece of knowledge. Every act of generosity or courage. Every philosophical debate. It’s as if none of it ever happened.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  He had no answer. He walked slowly out of the chapel and paused in the doorway. “I guess not. But I’d prefer to think it’s only a pile of rock and water that’s going to get swallowed next week by Jerry. And not a history.”

  Hutch nodded. “I know.”

  He looked at the artifact bag. “The god. Who’s here to rescue the god?”

  She gazed at him and he saw a sad, pensive smile. “We are,” she said. “We’re taking him home with us.”

  “Where he’ll have no believers.”

  “Careful, Randy. Keep talking like that and people will think you’re an archeologist.”

  A few minutes later, as they walked under the arch, a temblor hit. They stopped and waited for it to pass.

  Beekman appeared on-screen wearing a triumphant smile. “We were right, Marcel,” he said. “It’s there.”

  Marcel, wrapped in his own dark thoughts, had been staring down at the planetary surface. “What’s where, Gunther?”

  “The skyhook base.”

  “You found it!”

  “Yes. It was right where we thought.”

  “On the west coast.”

  “Mt. Blue. There’s a large structure on top. Six-sided. About two hundred meters across. It’s enormous.”

  “How high is it?”

  “It’s about six, seven stories. Looks as if it was broken off at the top.”

  “And the rest of it?”

  “In the ocean. It’s all over the sea bottom. Hundreds of square kilometers of wreckage.” He brought up pictures.

  Marcel looked at the outline of the mountaintop structure, and then at vast agglomerations of underwater debris. Some pieces even jutted above the surface.

  “It’s been a while since it happened,” said Beekman. “The fragments that stick up out of the water look like rocky islands.” That had in fact been the assessment during Wendy’s original hasty survey. “We really don’t have the right people or the equipment to do an analysis, but we think that if we reassembled the pieces on the bottom, we’d have a piece of the skyhook approximately a hundred kilometers high.”

  “I wonder where the station itself is?” said Marcel.

  Beekman shrugged. “Who knows? We don’t even know how long ago it broke up. But once we get through this, it would be worth the Academy’s time to send another mission out here to look for it.”

  Marcel studied the images. “I don’t understand,” he said, “how these people could build a skyhook, but not leave anything in the way of a skyscraper. Or any other kind of technological artifact. Is everything buried under the glaciers?”

  “Nobody has any idea,” said Beekman. “And we have neither time nor equipment to conduct a survey. I suggest we just gather as much evidence as we can. And keep an open mind.”

  “What you’re telling me is that we may never get the answers to any of this.”

  Beekman could not have agreed more completely. “That’s exactly right,” he said.

  Marcel sighed. “There should be something. Structures of some sort. I mean, you can’t just have a lot of walled candlelit cities, and at the same time run equipment into orbit.” He flipped a pen across his console. “They did check for that, right? The tower had no electrical capability? No real power source?”

  He meant Hutch and her team. “She was asked to look for technology,” said Beekman. “But I think they assumed there was none. I think we all assumed it.”

  “Well, there you go then. Maybe we were just not looking closely enough.”

  “I don’t think that could be. I mean, this was a blowgun culture.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” Marcel said, “that maybe the tower was a museum? Maybe our artifacts were somebody else’s artifacts first.”

  “That would require a fairly unlikely coincidence.”

  “Gunther, when will we get back a reading on the skyhook’s dates?”

  “Shouldn’t take long. We scanned the samples and sent the results. The Academy will have them by now. We asked for a quick turnaround, so we should get them in a few days.” He crossed his arms. “It’s really sad. I know damned well there are people back at the Academy who’d do anything to get a look at the base of the skyhook.”

  Marcel said nothing.

  “Maybe if the lander works okay,” Beekman suggested, “we could ask Hutch to take a peek. Before they come back to orbit.”

  “Not a chance,” said Marcel. “If the lander works, we’re bringing them home. No side stops.”

  Captain Nicholson had carefully assigned full responsibility for the lander accident to Wetheral who, he’d reported, had taken the vehicle without permission. Probably, he suggested, the passengers had offered him a substantial sum for the service. He added that they were not likely to be aware that the flight was unauthorized. Because one of the passengers was the renowned editor and essayist Gregory MacAllister, he advised Corporate to find a way to overlook the incident. If he survives, Nicholson had argued, MacAllister would be a dangerous adversary should TransGalactic assume he was in some way responsible and try to take legal action against him. If he does not, there would be little advantage to pursuing him beyond the grave. Undoubtedly Corporate could collect damages from his estate, but the cost in public relations would be enormous. Best call it an unfortunate incident.

  He’d been eating a listless breakfast, trying to maintain a conversation with the frivolous guests at his table, receiving periodic updates from Clairveau. The landing party had been attacked by giant flying bugs, and they’d discovered a chapel of some sort in the forest. The important thing was that they were still on schedule to reach Tess. At this point, that was all that mattered.

  The experience had driven a lesson home: He would never again allow himself to be talked into violating procedure. Not ever. Not for any reason. Periodically one or another of his guests jerked him back to the table With a question about the gift shop on the Starlight Deck or the collision parties planned for Saturday night. He moved his eggs around on his plate and answered as best he could.

  One bad decision, allowing MacAllister to have his way, threatened to negate the solid performance of a lifetime. And it had not been his idea at all. He had in fact been pressured. Placed in a no-win situation by a pushy passenger with power and a management that wouldn’t have backed him had MacAllister become offended.

  It was an outrage.

  His link vibrated against his wrist. He raised it casually to his ear. “Captain,” said his officer of the deck. “Eyes only for you. From Corporate.”

  This would be management’s first response to the debacle.

  “Be there in a minute,” he whispered. Please, Lord, let me survive this one time. He drew the cloth napkin to his lips and rose, apologizing for the interruption but explaining he had to make a command decision. He smiled charmingly at the ladies, shook hands firmly with their escorts, and heard himself referred to as a good man as he hurried away.

  He went directly to the bridge, heart pounding
. The OOD, who could not have missed the gravity of the situation, greeted him with a polite nod. Nicholson returned the gesture, sat down in his chair, and directed the AI to put the message through.

  FROM:

  DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS

  TO:

  CAPTAIN, EVENING STAR

  DTG:

  11/28 1625

  CONFIDENTIAL // EYES ONLY

  ERIK,

  YOU UNDERSTAND MAJOR LIABILITY POTENTIAL HERE. DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO EFFECT MACALLISTER’S RESCUE. KEEP ADVISED.

  YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONTACT PRESCOTT.

  BAKER

  Contact Prescott.

  Prescott was a law firm that specialized in defending off-world nonjurisdictional cases. They were telling him he could expect to be held accountable. That signaled the end of his career, at the very least. If they elected to prosecute, God knew what might happen to him.

  He sat miserably staring at the message. And he envied MacAllister.

  XVII

  Watching Harcourt die taught me a theological lesson: Life is short; never fail to do something you really want to do simply because you’re afraid of being caught.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, “The Last Hours of Abbey Harcourt,” Show Me the Money

  Hours to breakup (est): 153

  The news that the mission had found the skyhook base didn’t cheer anybody on the ground. They were far too engaged worrying about their skins.

  “Pity it’s not up and working,” said Chiang. “We could use a skyhook.”

  “Actually,” said Hutch, “it is nearby.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “On the western side of the continent. It’s on a mountaintop on the coast.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing it before we go,” said Nightingale.

  MacAllister shook his head. Do these people never learn? “I think,” he said, “we should not tempt fate. Let’s concentrate on getting our rear ends out of here.”

  “There might be a way.” The grayness that had settled about Beekman had lifted slightly. Only slightly, but Marcel caught a glimpse of hope.