"Impossible," Dal said, "Technology can do a lot, but not that kind of resistance. It's like the question of the irresistible force and the immovable object—how immovable would they have to be, to resist a Force 9 or Force 10 quake? The very definition of such a quake is—total destruction of all man-made structures, and virtual destruction of the land configurations. I'm going to have to get a look at the seismic patterns—you told me they had basic seismographs— but statistically speaking, a planet like this should have at least one Force 9 quake every two or three thousand years, and for this particular area we could make a statistically defensible prediction that nothing, and I mean nothing, could survive from one civilization to another, giving each civilization Rakmall's Limit of twelve thousand years."
"Would Rakmall's Limit apply to a nonhuman technology, Dal?"
He scowled and nodded, evidently thinking deeply. "To a nonhuman civilization, perhaps not. But I can't think of a technology which could survive Rakmall's. I'll have to explore all these structures—I hesitate even to call them buildings, now. Maybe we can get a clue to the level of the technology which built them. I do think we can confidently say they were not human or even humanoid. Look—" he swept his arms in an all-encompassing gesture, "The size, the arrangement of the structures—it makes no sense for any culture I have seen. I can say confidently one thing; they are no known civilization or technology." He sighed deeply. "Sharrioz! How I wish I had a fully accredited team with me! An expedition, say, of ninety to a hundred men, equipped in all specialties—"
Abruptly he dismissed all that. He said, "Let's get on. Let's go straight through, making a graphic record of the exterior of every structure, and we can code them at our leisure."
Again they started through the ruins, pace by pace. The sun climbed, began slowly to decline. Dal finally yielded when Cendri demanded a brief stop for rest and refreshment, seeing that Rhu was exhausted and sweating in the subtropical heat, and even Laurina, fascinated by what they were doing, and bent on proving she could handle the graphics recorder, looked wilted.
Vaniya's servants had provided ample and pleasing food, and Cendri would have liked to sit down by Dal and talk over the morning's work; but as Rhu approached them, reluctantly, she recalled the social prohibitions of the Matriarchate. She and Dal could perhaps be dispensed from these prohibitions for the duration of their work. He was also their Companion, and had a right to share her meals, she assumed, but she remembered Vaniya's scandalized question about whether or not she would find it distracting. If she sought Dai's company out of working time, she gave weight to that belief. She turned to Laurina, and they sat together on some oddly-proportioned steps (did the original inhabitants of this place have legs fourteen feet long, or did they fly?) spreading out their lunches, while Dal, trying to conceal his annoyance, resigned himself to Rhu's company. She noticed that Vaniya's servants, mostly women, separated themselves, drawing near to Cendri and Laurina—though not near enough to listen to what they were saying—while the few men among them kept strictly separate.
Dal after a period of time, checked his timepiece and the angle of the sun. "If we are going to finish the preliminary survey today, we have no more time to lose. Laurina, you make a graphic of the steps from all four directions before we leave here."
"How dare you," Laurina flared. "I do not take orders from any male! We are not now in the maleworlds!"
Shocked, dismayed—this was what she had been most afraid of—Cendri sprang to her feet. She had an irrational impulse to throw herself between them—to protect Dal? Laurina had scrambled upright, and was facing Dal in angry indignation.
"Laurina," Cendri said sharply, and suddenly knew what she must say:
"If you wish to work with us, you must to some extent respect and accept our customs! I explained to you that on University, we do not make these distinctions. Furthermore, my—my assistant—" she almost choked on the words, but this at least was necessary, "did not give you an order, but made a courteous request of a fellow worker. If you are not prepared to grant the same courtesy to my assistant as to myself, we can dispense at once with your assistance!"
For a moment Laurina remained motionless, staring at Dal in angry defiance, and Cendri had a moment, her heart pounding, of dread. Vaniya's servants, she thought, looked ready to tear Dal limb from limb, and Rhu had turned as white as the bleached limestone of the courtyard under their feet, and was bracing himself against a column as if his bones and muscles no longer had the strength to hold him upright.
Then Laurina dropped her eyes. She said, hesitantly, "I am sorry, Cendri—I forgot. I am—I am not accustomed—"
Relief washed like a spring-tide through Cendri's body and mind. She said gently, "I know; custom of a lifetime is very hard to break. Dal, too, was heedless; among these surroundings, a request should have been relayed through me." She gave Dal a hard look—did he know what he had almost precipitated? But at least they had proved a point... .or she hoped they had. If this point had to be made again and again, it might indeed be better to dispense with Laurina's assistance—or the assistance of any native of Isis/Cinderella!
She was glad she had left her voice-scriber running. It was sound-activated and would provide a complete record of the episode for her mentors on University. She wondered what it would provide in the way of semantic analysis. She watched, a little fearfully, as Laurina went toward Dal, not sure which of them she now wanted to protect, for Dal was glowering; but Laurina said, with shy formality, "If the Scholar Dame's assistant will inform me which angles of the steps should be recorded, I will endeavor to supply it with the adequate graphics."
Dal looked a little taken aback, but he was willing to meet Laurina halfway; was, Cendri realized, aware of the enormous emotional step the woman of Isis had taken. He answered with perfectly correct formality, "We should have a recording from each direction, and one from the top of each flight of steps, in order. If the respected teacher will avoid facing the instrument directly sunward, the quality of the recordings will be greatly improved."
Rhu, Cendri realized, was watching the episode with a surprise which reminded her of—for a minute she could not remember what it reminded her of. Then she knew. The male, Bak, who had penetrated into their quarters with a message for Dal, and had been captured. He had looked like that at Dal, when Dal brushed Cendri aside and took over questioning him.
Poor little devil! Maybe Rhu will learn something from this, too, about life on University.
Is that fair, to expose him to that kind of hope, when his world is so narrowly circumscribed? Life for him, at least, will never change.1
But for the present the recording proceeded smoothly, and they worked their way, court by court, open space by open space, through the ruined city, with Dal—she knew—describing his impressions on a voice-scriber set to a throat-mike so that he could subvocalize and make his personal notes; Cendri making the record by voice in the language of Isis for the use of such help as they might later have from the students and assistants there, and Laurina handling the graphics recorder which would provide visual holograph commentary on everything they had seen that day.
The sun had begun to decline downward, substantially altering the quality of the light, when they came to the enormous open space at the very center of the ruins, where the antique spaceship lay. Cendri approached it hesitantly, against her will feeling something
of the wonder and awe she had felt there last night. Or had it all been hallucination, illusion, delusion, a kind of mass hallucination? Tentatively, she glanced at the spaceship, at the faint light she had seen in the ruins, but, though deep canyons of shadow lay across the city, darkening the area around the spaceship, there was no sign nor glimmer of reflected light.
Had it all been illusion, then? She glanced at Laurina, and saw, in shock, that a faint trace of the ecstasy and awe were outlined on her companion's face. Laurina said in a whisper, "I wish I could be sure that They did not feel our presence was irreverent, Cen
dri."
Cendri felt like saying a fervent, "Me, too!" But she knew this was completely irrational. She glanced at Dal—had he too been touched by the wonder of the site, by any trace of that contact?
Evidently not; Dal, was murmuring into his voice-scriber, transcribing his personal notes on each successive feature of the ruins. He looked happy and completely preoccupied with what he was doing; but as Cendri approached him, he broke into a grin.
He said in their own language, "Cendri, is that what it seems to be?"
"The spaceship? Yes, of course."
"That doesn't belong to the ruins. It's not more than three hundred years old, and it looks in worse preservation than they do!"
She had noticed that herself. She said, "As a matter of fact, it has been here sixty-nine years, sidereal Unity time. It is the ship which carried the Isis/Cinderella colony here."
"Hell of a place to land a starship," Dal commented, voicing the thought Cendri had had, "What do you suppose made them pick out a spot like this?"
She could not comment on that without going into the belief of the Pro-Matriarch that they had been guided there, and that would inevitably have led to some kind of discussion of her own experience there. And unless Dal himself sensed something in the area, she could not bring it up. He would call her imaginative, superstitious .. .she couldn't face that, not now.
And if he does feel it, how will he be able to make his exploration of the ruins? she wondered. She herself could hardly force her dragging feet to cross the great expanse of—was it stone? Concrete?—around the starship.
Dal furrowed his brow and murmured, "What is it they call this place?"
"We-were-guided," she said, and he raised his brows and said,
"Extraordinary. I wonder what made them think of that? That
would be your province, of course, alien psychology___ " and went a little closer to the starship. "What a very strange place to land. I wonder why?"
Laurina was moving around, slowly recording the ruins and the ship from all angles. Cendri made a note of the time and angles, but her mind was busy elsewhere. Faintly, dimly, like an illusion, a dream within a dream, she remembered the night before, when a flooding warmth and joy had gone all through her....
Laurina said, "I wonder, sometimes, if They are angry that after They had brought us here, we did not do as They probably wished, and come to live with Them here...."
Cendri blinked at the question. She started to say, that was ridiculous, then realized that Laurina's answer to that particular question could tell her as much about the society of Isis as Dal could learn about the ruins. She said carefully, "Why didn't you do so then? Live here inside the ruins, that is?"
"I don't know, Cendri; it was, of course, before I was born," Laurina said. "Perhaps only the High Matriarch could tell you, for it was her predecessor, I believe, who made the decision. I can only guess, as a historian, that perhaps the buildings seemed, to them, unsuitable for human occupation. Or it may be that They did not wish to be disturbed except at their own time and in the proper way. It is obvious that They are much older and wiser than our people."
Cendri decided not to think much about that answer now. A time would come when she could sit down with one of her mentors on University and subject it to intense semantic analysis.
But it also occurred to her to think; Vaniya must have been alive
when the decision was made. Perhaps she would know_____
Dal came toward them, as they moved through the abandoned area of the spaceship's landing, and went toward the remainder of the structures. He spoke directly to Laurina.
"Have you been inside any of the structures?"
Laurina shook her head. She said, "I have been told that it is impossible to enter any structure in We-were-guided."
Dal frowned and considered. Then he turned resolutely to one high, towering structure, and laboriously dragged himself up the high steps. Cendri crawled up after him, and after a minute, Laurina, bracing the graphic-recorder console on her arm by its strap, struggled up behind them. They crowded together on the small platform at the top.
"No doors," Dal said, glancing up into the dark expanse above them. "I ought to find out what's inside."
But when he pressed forward, he frowned, flattened himself, then said, "Come feel this, Cendri."
She touched it with gingerly fingers. "What is it, Dal? It feels like glass, but I can't see anything."
"Unusually clear glass, maybe," he said, "or some invisible material which bends light around it—it's not transparent, though—" he pressed his face against the unyielding barrier. "It just looks as if there's nothing there. Extraordinary."
Cendri nodded. "What is it, then? Force-field?"
"How should I know? I hate to try and use a laser on it; but somehow, sooner or later, I've got to get inside one of these structures...."
"We have some force-field disruptors in the equipment," Cendri said, "They'll break almost any known kind of stasis field, if that's what it is."
He nodded, signalled to one of Vaniya's servants who was carrying assorted equipment, and took out a small graduated series of force-field breakers. He ordered Cendri and Laurina down off the platform, and aimed the disruptor field at the barrier. There was a growing light and a painful subsonic whine, but no result. Dal tried one after another of the field-breakers, but with equal lack of results.
"No luck," he said at last. "Whoever put that thing up there, they meant it to stay. Maybe when we get a little further along, I'll pick one of the smaller buildings and try to cut into it with a laser."
Laurina said, hesitantly, "But suppose They do not want us inside?"
Dal turned on her, and he looked about to explode; but fortunately he remembered in time where they were. He said, with careful patience, "If They don't want me inside, I'm afraid They will have to tell me so Themselves."
"But They do not speak to men," Laurina said, looking shocked, and Dal grinned. He said, "Then They will have to tell Cendri, and she can tell me—all right, Laurina? Meanwhile, it's going to be dark fairly soon. I knew all along it would take more than one day just to make preliminary explorations. Shall we go back to the gates before it gets dark? I have lights with the stuff, but it's been a long day and there's no sense in overdoing it."
No one moved, however, and Cendri realized that none of them were conditioned to seeing a man make such a decision for an entire expedition. She said, "Let's get going, then. Laurina, you know the way back, would you like to lead the way?" And they started back toward the gates.
There was still some light left outside the gates, and the sun was not wholly down. On the shore below them, the women of the wrecked pearl-divers' village were moving along the shore, gathering up what the tide had brought in from the wreckage of their village and their world.
"They are fortunate," Laurina said. "A great deal of timber has been brought back by the waves—look, they are hauling it up above tide-mark—and now not so many men will need to risk their lives inland, cutting more timber and beams. We have had great waves before, though never such an enormous one. Within a few days, some preliminary shelters will be built, and by the next season, the houses will be ready to live in, and the life of the village will go on. Although I suppose the High Matriarch will order that the next watch-tower be built up higher, perhaps almost as high as We-were-guided."
Cendri said in dismay, "You mean they'll go down and live there again?"
Laurina looked grave. She said, "Yes, Cendri, they have no choice. We cannot abandon the pearl-beds which were planted there, which have been there for a generation now. Without our pearls, Isis has nothing. A little gold from sea-water, a little magnesium, a few biologicals—but it is our pearls on which we depend, and these and the other villages down the coast are our lifeblood."
This is no planet for colonization, Cendri thought. The Scholar Dame di Velo had been right. This planet should have been turned over to a scientific foundation, for study of the Build
er ruins—if they are Builder ruins—and never turned over to a colony at all. It's never going to be a viable settlement.
She doubted very much if they could even manage to hold out long enough to get the tsunami-prediction equipment which, Miranda had thought, would make such a difference to their world and their people.
She said something of this to Dal, low-voiced. He said, "If they really were Builder ruins—well, that might make a difference. We have nothing else which can be authenticated as being directly of Builder origin. If they had been Builder ruins, I am sure the Unity would have offered to resettle the Isis Colony elsewhere, at its own expense, on a planet more suitable to their agriculture and their way of life, in exchange for unlimited opportunity to study the Builder artifacts—"
"Do you really think they would accept such an offer from the Unity after what happened on Labrys? They have reason to distrust the Unity—" Abruptly she heard, as if by delayed action, something else he had said.
"You say if they had been BuiJder ruins...Dal, do you know that they're not? And if they're not, what are they? Do you know?"
"No, to both questions," Dal said, "but whatever they are— Cendri, don't be naive! They are too new to be Builder ruins! Unless—" and he wet his lips, hesitating. "I hardly dare to believe— to hope—"
"Dal, what is it?"
"Only one thing could have preserved them like that," he said, "It is only a theoretical construct, no known civilization was able to use it—"
"What, Dal? What are you talking about?"
"Time stasis," he said.
"Time—" she broke off. "Oh, Dal!" she said, chiding, "I thought it had been conclusively proved that was impossible by all the laws of physics—"
"Impossible by the known laws," he said, "but they used to say that about trans-light speeds and antigravity and antimatter black holes—"
She said, "Goodness, Dal, isn't it enough to challenge all the accepted scientific theories about the Builders? You've seen what that did to the Dame di Velo! If you're going to start talking about wild theories like Time stasis—"
Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Novel 19 Page 16
