Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

  “That was a Vovokan battle sphere. Lose the attendants and go in unarmed,” Siobhan said.

  “I don’t think that’s safe,” Caden said.

  “I’ll take Vincent with me. He seems to get along fine with them.”

  Imanol and Telisa traded looks.

  “When they first ran in there to get Telisa, I was shooting just after the sphere was destroyed,” Imanol said. “Those are machines. They have to have noticed.”

  “We could test it,” Cilreth said. “Send Vincent in with a simulacrum.”

  “Things this advanced would know the difference instantly,” Telisa said. “Besides, do you have an android sitting around?”

  “We need to make friends with them, not fight them,” Siobhan said.

  “I’d like to,” Telisa said. “We were desperate because you had been captured.”

  “Okay, I want to go in with Vincent.”

  “Telisa can’t send you in there on a crazy gamble. Your life is her responsibility,” Caden sent to Jason. It looked to Jason like Telisa was not on the channel but Siobhan was.

  “Shut up, she’s thinking,” Siobhan sent back.

  “Normally I wouldn’t allow it,” Telisa said. “But it’s so very important to be friends with these Celarans. So important maybe we should risk it. I’ll go.”

  “You? We can’t risk you.”

  Telisa snorted. “I’m a copy, remember? Besides, I’m in charge and I already decided.”

  “And if they vaporize you?” Cilreth asked.

  “Then go back with some toys, prove yourselves valuable to Shiny, and tell him I died because Magnus wasn’t here to help. Maybe he’ll send both of us on the next expedition.”

  Telisa approached Vincent and motioned for him to follow. But the alien remained near Siobhan.

  “He’s been acting strange since saving me,” Siobhan said. “And he sent some messages.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?!” Imanol snapped.

  “I am saying so. This is a war zone. I wanted to give Telisa time to recover.”

  “How has he been acting and what has he been saying?” Telisa asked.

  “He hasn’t left me since then,” Siobhan said. “I’ve been afraid to try and avoid him because I owe him for that. He told me to walk. He told me to stop, just the nonverbal commands suite. He has my laser and I gave him permissions for it, though he can’t shoot us.”

  “Uh oh. There may be some expectation on his part for payment,” Caden said.

  “I’d be happy to do what I could, but I don’t know what he wants. And we’re kind of broke now,” Siobhan said.

  That’s true. We went from “you get whatever you want” to slaves of Shiny, Jason thought.

  “There’s nothing bad here, it’s amazing we’re finally starting to communicate with him!” Cilreth said.

  “Especially given that as far as we know, communication is rare with Blackvines,” Telisa said. “His use of commands is interesting. Think about it. A non-social creature might try commands first. It would treat us like machines to be controlled. It uses tools, computers, things like that. Anything external to itself would be thought of in the same light: things there to be used.”

  “Back to ‘uh oh’ then,” Caden said. “We won’t be able to have any meaningful exchange.”

  “Give him time. Question is, should Siobhan go out of her way to obey, so that he knows she can hear him, or should she not obey, to show that she’s an independent entity?”

  “Think on it. Come up with a plan. I’m going to check out that ship,” Telisa said.

  “Vincent won’t come without me I think,” Siobhan said.

  “Then you’re with me.”

  Telisa left her weapons and motioned for Siobhan to do the same. Caden and Imanol watched with obvious worry. Cilreth brought out two more rifles just in case. Jason realized most of them were injured from everything they had gone through.

  At least we’re alive. For the moment.

  Telisa and Siobhan walked out of the forest and onto the hardtop. Siobhan and Vincent followed her out of the ship. Jason watched the feed from their eyes and stayed on the channel. He could tell Cilreth and Imanol were watching, too.

  “I’m going out alone first.”

  “Come on, Telisa. You need Vincent.”

  “Does it really make sense for all of us to risk our lives together?” Telisa asked.

  “No. It makes sense for me to go out with Vincent while you stay here.”

  “Stay here,” Telisa ordered. She moved out to the remains of the nearest tower.

  Telisa slowly walked out into the open. The New Iridar could see Celaran machines patrolling the area. Two of them peeled off to approach Telisa.

  Vincent left Siobhan’s position and made a beeline for Telisa.

  “Okay, I think I’ve been accepted.”

  “Maybe,” Imanol said. “Look behind you.”

  Telisa became aware of Vincent. The disc shape robots hovered nearby. One of them peeled off and left. The other stood by.

  “Thank you, Vincent,” she said.

  “Forward.”

  Jason realized the nonverbal command came from Vincent. Jason’s link had no voice profile to assign to Vincent’s communications, so it sounded cold and artificial.

  Telisa shrugged and walked forward.

  “Okay, everyone. Looks like we got lucky. Myself, Siobhan, Caden and Vincent are heading in to look. Cilreth stays at the ship. The rest of you can look around but stay in these two buildings closest to the New Iridar. If you see an eight-armed robot then run for it. That’s what their net trappers look like.”

  Wow. We’re really just allowed in? Or are we being drawn out for the slaughter?

  Jason decided he had been training with Imanol for too long. He headed over to the nearest building and prepared his smart rope.

  “Let’s see what we can see,” Imanol said.

  “What’s up with that Vincent, anyway?” Jason said. “What’s your analysis?”

  “My analysis? My analysis is that that big black weed is going to screw us over just like Shiny did,” Imanol said.

  “Bet on it?” Jason said.

  “What could we possibly bet?” Imanol said.

  Jason checked back with Telisa’s team. They had made it to the top of the spacecraft hangar building.

  “It’s not letting us through,” Telisa said.

  “I guess we’re friends, but not close friends,” Siobhan summarized.

  “We’re on probation since we trashed part of the complex,” Cilreth said from the ship.

  “Then what did Vincent do?”

  “Good question.”

  Chapter 18

  Caden stood with Telisa and Siobhan atop the Celaran building. Vincent scuttled about nearby. Caden was still riding high on his relief that Siobhan had returned. He still keenly felt the precarious nature of their lives. She might have never come back.

  Telisa must think of Magnus a lot, he thought. She’s patient, though. She had no choice.

  “This is the building,” Telisa said.

  Caden saw Vincent hovering around a hatchway leading into the building.

  “Vincent knows something interesting is in there, too,” Caden noted.

  Siobhan went over and tried to open the door flaps again. They refused to budge.

  “No go,” she said.

  “Is this punishment for the attack? Or just... they’ve become more cautious?” Caden wondered aloud.

  “There’s a puzzle here,” Telisa said. “Vincent could go into the compound at will, but could not get through any of the doors. We’ve always been allowed through the doors, until now.”

  “Not true,” Imanol said to the group channel. He transmitted to them from the top of an adjacent building. “I’m free to enter this area.”

  “Then investigate,” Telisa sent back.

  “Okay. Certain areas are restricted,” Caden said. “And is it really surprising? They won’t let us in the building wit
h the spacecraft.”

  “They. They who?” Siobhan said.

  “Probably an AI,” Caden said. “Or computers, robots, whatever.”

  “Okay. Investigate what you can. Collect what you can. Don’t try to force anything. We’ll show ‘them’ we’re just curious,” Telisa said.

  Telisa stayed with Caden and Siobhan as they went from building to building, checking their access and snooping around. The robots were always nearby, but they did not encounter any of the net throwers and nothing interfered with their investigation. Most of the structures housed complex factories of staggering complexity. Knowing what they did about the Celarans and their love of multifunction systems, it seemed likely the complex could produce anything needed for a large colony.

  Hours later, each of them had as many artifacts as they could carry. Unfortunately most of them were alike. Either batons like the ones they had already, or what they thought were spare parts for the robots or hexagonal wall blocks as were used in the houses. The team was about to head back to the New Iridar for the day when their links got a message.

  “We’ve made a breakthrough,” Cilreth transmitted from back near the ship. “Imanol and Jason found more of those black cloth items. A lot more. We’ve been looking them over.”

  “We’ll be there in just a few minutes,” Telisa said eagerly. “What’s the gist of it?” Telisa headed back for the smart ropes they used to scale the building.

  “I figured them out. I know what these are and I know more about the Celarans.”

  Telisa hurried over to the edge of the building and started down. Everyone followed, even Vincent. Caden shared Telisa’s urgency to learn about the Celarans. They double timed it down to the flat surface of the field and across to the border.

  Two robots worked to repair the fence, one from each side. They avoided the machines and walked through the center. Caden spotted Cilreth in their small camp set up just outside the old compound net. Everyone gathered around Cilreth in the tiny encampment. She had the black things arrayed around her on top of Vovokan equipment containers.

  “So what are these things?” Telisa asked.

  “Here’s the key: we found them in four different sizes. There are a very large number in this biggest size. The other three sizes, well, there’s a lot less of those.”

  “Clothes?”

  “Well, you know the Celarans. They’re more like, clothes, link, medical kit, chameleon suit, battery, fly booster and Cthulhu knows what else. It’s decked out eight ways from extinction.”

  Telisa picked one of the suits up and tried to make heads or tails of it.

  “Clothes? So this is the biggest clue we’re going to get as to what they look like,” Siobhan said.

  Caden took a suit and started to look it over too. “Uhhh,” he said helplessly. “This is like trying to figure out women’s clothing before I got old enough to want to learn how to take it all off.”

  “I cracked that one too,” Cilreth said. She brought up a pointer and passed it out to their links. Caden accessed it and brought up picture of a creature wearing the outfit in his PV.

  “The glider snakes are the Celarans!” Jason said.

  “Well, probably no, they’re all too small. The most common size fits one about two and a half meters long.”

  “But if the shoe fits... sorry. You know what I mean.”

  Caden looked at the outfit and Cilreth’s concept rendering. There was no question it was for a creature just like the glider snakes. The entire thing was symmetrical along two axes, just like the glider snakes. The black part covered the top, complete with a webwork of miniature equipment embedded inside. The straps or bands came around to secure it, and they were spaced perfectly to allow the glowing chevrons on the underside to be seen.

  Probably that’s how they speak, Caden thought again. Those light patterns. Though at this level they must have links, inside or in those suits.

  The garment was widest in the middle, and connected from one end to the other with a hole in the center where they glider snakes were thickest.

  “Any idea about the hole? They don’t have anything there, do they?” Caden asked.

  “Light sensors,” Cilreth said. “They also have some more on each end, around the fingers.”

  “Too weird. Creepy,” Siobhan said.

  “Two hands, six fingers,” Telisa said. “It makes sense. I suspect base six math. There were 36 towers around the third site. And they seem partial to hexagons, that may be related.”

  “But with a hand on each end like that, they can’t move and use their hands at the same time,” Imanol said.

  “Every race has its advantages and limitations. I think these guys can eat and breathe at the same time, for instance,” Telisa said.

  “Yeah, eat and... it never comes out,” Jason said.

  “We don’t know that,” Telisa said. “Shiny regurgitates his old meals. Eventually. So they could do that, too. But I think this tree sap may be so pure, and they may have evolved to eat only that one thing, so maybe their bodies know how to use every bit of it.”

  “But a metabolism—” Cilreth said.

  “Waste gases?” Siobhan said.

  “Basic hollow tube structure, seems like an almost universal design. Food goes in and comes out. Though here both ends look the same... which end is which?” Imanol said.

  “No idea just yet,” Telisa said. “Let’s move on. Why are these Celarans all so stunted? Maybe some environmental disaster on the new planet they did not anticipate?”

  “Or maybe these are a dumber larval form,” Imanol said.

  “A possibility,” Siobhan said. “Another one is that those things are to the Celarans like monkeys or primates are to us. They just happen to be the most similar life form from the same planet, but they fall short of intelligence.”

  “Ah. Good theory. Imagine the confusion if an alien landed on our planet and found primates in the jungle outside an abandoned human city!” Telisa said.

  “They could still be similar to dogs and cats or something,” Jason said. “We don’t usually have primate pets but they might enjoy domestic creatures very similar to themselves.”

  “They could be testing the terraform,” Caden said. “If Celarans are closely related to those things, they could see if the planet is safe by observing how those things fare here. Maybe they haven’t arrived yet, or something went wrong and they’re not coming.”

  Telisa brightened. “Now we’re producing some great ideas.”

  “But the robots could tell if it’s safe here,” Imanol said.

  “To some degree. This is a more robust way to check the chemical and biological safety?”

  “They would be pretty mean to send their equivalent of primates to live here and just see if they live or die,” Siobhan said.

  “Maybe yes. Maybe it’s not wrong by their mores to do such a thing. Or maybe they were almost certain it’s safe before the creatures were populated here,” Telisa said.

  “But they never showed up. So maybe they were wrong,” Imanol said.

  “Well we still have no real live Celarans. But we do have a lot of toys to play with,” Cilreth said brightly.

  Chapter 19

  Cilreth went to visit Telisa in her tiny quarters on the New Iridar. She found Telisa brooding.

  And I think I know what about, Cilreth thought. They had been collecting samples of Celaran technology from all accessible areas of the base for three days. The cargo hold was full of large numbers of hovering tech batons, Celaran clothing, and spare parts. They had not found any quiescent robots to steal, nor had they dared to capture any.

  “How are we going to get that Celaran ship out of there?” Cilreth asked. “I don’t know the first thing about it. My brain is already full of Terran and Vovokan stuff. It pains me to think about learning Celaran next.”

  Said like a true old timer.

  “I’m not sure that we’re going to get it out of there,” Telisa said. “I suspected you might feel t
hat way, so I’ve asked Siobhan and Caden to learn everything they can about the Celaran cybernetics.”

  “She has a more technical background,” Cilreth said.

  “And he’s highly intelligent and competitive. It can’t hurt to challenge him.”

  “Yes. I agree,” Cilreth said. “I’m surprised to hear you say we might not be taking it.”

  “It’s not our ship to take.”

  “Well, it might be if the Celaran civilization is dead,” Cilreth said. “And we already shot the place up...”

  “How secure is this ship now that we got rid of that watchdog?” Telisa asked, dodging the topic.

  “I imagine the attendants are impossible to make safe,” Cilreth said. “My guess is, Shiny has ways to take control of them I can’t do anything about, since I’m not allowed into those systems. But at least they almost certainly don’t have the power to make tachyonic transmissions.”

  Should I have said that with so much confidence? On the other side of the light barrier, faster transmissions actually take less power, not more... if the Vovokans can intercept insanely fast messages...

  “I thought we had complete control of them.”

  “Oh they seem to take our orders, all right. But we don’t have core access. They just do what we say... I think they will do what Shiny says over us. The New Iridar is a brighter story, though. I have direct access to the core system. I learned a lot on the Clacker...”

  And I wish my double was here, because she was even better at this than I am.

  “Do you think he’s tracking us? Do you think he could remotely recall the ship? Does he know if we’re alive or dead? Is he listening to our every word?”

  Cilreth sighed.

  “Well. The ship will send a message before it dies if it can. I could turn that off, but I figured, if we die, no harm in letting him know the particulars. This far out, I don’t think he can track us using the normal setup. He might have attached an isolated system that transmits tachyons, then blinded our sensors to it. But where would the power come from?”

  “Where, indeed,” Telisa said in that way that meant she wanted Cilreth to check it out.