Jack Mcdeviit - Deepsix (v1)

by Emily

  "Okay." Hutch's voice. "That should do it. Give it a minute and we'll see if we can break it loose."

  "You know," Beekman said, "you might remind her that they should be more careful."

  "She knows who she's working with." He folded his hands behind his head. "I'd rather not become a nuisance."

  "What if something happens?"

  "We'll let management worry about it."

  Kellie's voice: "Okay, throw some more snow on it."

  "I'd feel better," said Beekman, "if we had a bona fide archeologist down there."

  Marcel didn't agree. "We're probably safer with Kellie and Hutch. They might not get all the details right, but I'd rather have them in charge if trouble starts."

  "Still won't open,"said Nightingale.

  "Let me try."

  "How big's the door?" asked Beekman.

  "A little more than a meter high. Everything's on a small scale."

  "I don't think we cut all the way through."

  Beekman leaned down and fingered the send key.

  "What are you going to tell them?" asked Marcel.

  "To be careful."

  "I'm not sure they'll be receptive to gratuitous advice. They've already threatened to cut me off."

  Another laser ignited.

  "Stay with it." Nightingale's voice. "Here. Get it here."

  It went on for several more minutes. At one point Hutch cautioned someone to relax. Take it easy. We'll get through. Then Marcel heard the sound of scraping stone and some grunts. And finally cries of satisfaction.

  When things got quiet again he switched over to his private channel with Hutch. "What have you got?" he asked.

  "Used to be a passageway," she told him. "It's just a lot of ice and dirt now. I'm not even sure where the walls are."

  Beekman got coffee for them and began to describe how preparations for the collision were going. Much of the detail was boring, but Beekman inevitably became so enthusiastic when he started talking about the Event, that Marcel pretended more interest in the details of the observations than he really felt. In fact, he didn't understand fine points like gravity wave fluctuations, and didn't much care how the planetary magnetic fields were affected. But he nodded at the right times and tried to look surprised when Beekman seemed to be springing some new piece of breakthrough data on him.

  Then Hutch's voice interrupted the flow. "Marcel, are you still there?"

  "I'm here. What have you got?"

  "I think we're into the Astronomer's private quarters. They're in pretty good shape. Looks like a suite of rooms. With cabinets—" She stopped a moment to caution one of the others to use care.

  "Cabinets? What's in them?"

  "They've been cleaned out. But they're in decent condition. And they've got symbols carved into them."

  "Good," said Marcel. "That's important, right?"

  "Yes," she said. "That's important."

  As he had with Beekman, he tried to sound enthusiastic. "Anything else there?"

  "A couch. You believe that? For a little guy. You wouldn't be able to use it, but a ten-year-old could."

  It was less than dazzling news. "Anything more?"

  "A table. Pretty badly smashed, though. And another door. In back."

  He heard Kellie's voice: "Hutch, look at this."

  "Can we have more light?"

  "I'll be damned,"said Nightingale.

  Beekman frowned with impatience. But while they waited to hear what was happening, the AI broke in. "Marcel? I'm sorry to interrupt, but we have an anomaly."

  "What is it, Bill?"

  "Strange object adrift."

  "On-screen, please."

  Marcel couldn't make it out. It looked like a long pin. Very long. It extended from one side of the screen to the other. And apparently beyond.

  "Bill, what is this thing? What are its dimensions?"

  "/ am unable to determine its function. It's three thousand kilometers long. Roughly."

  "Three thousand klicks," said Beekman. "That can't be right."

  "Actually, three thousand two hundred seventy-seven, Gunther."

  Marcel made a face and pushed back in his chair. "That's one odd-looking puppy, Gunny." It was long enough to reach from the tip of Maine down through Miami and well out into the Atlantic.

  "Its diameter is seven and a fraction meters."

  "Well," the planetologist said, "seven meters across and three thousand kilometers long." He looked at Marcel and shook his head. "That's not possible."

  "Are you sure, Bill?" Marcel asked. "We don't think those kinds of dimensions can happen."

  "I'll recheck the results of the scan."

  "Please do."

  "Bring it up to full mag," said Marcel. "Let's see a piece of it up close."

  Bill complied. It consisted, not of a single very long barrel, but of a series of parallel shafts. They could see between the shafts, see the night sky beyond.

  "The dimensions are correct as reported," said Bill.

  Marcel frowned. "So what is it, Gunther? What's it do?"

  "Don't know."

  "Bill, is it a ship of some sort?"

  "/ do not see how it could be, Marcel. But this is not a type object with which I have any experience."

  "Is this typical of the entire construct?"

  "This is typical," said Bill. "The shafts are solid. They are connected at regular intervals by braces. A few cables are adrift at one end, and an asteroid is attached to the other."

  An asteroid. "Bill, is it doing anything? The construct?"

  "There is no sign of activity."

  "You reading any energy output? Any evidence of internal power?"

  "Negative."

  Beekman was staring at the image. "I just can't figure it, Marcel. Object that long. It shouldn't hold together. Stresses would have to break it up."

  "Wouldn't that depend on what it was made from?"

  "Sure. But something like this would have to be pretty strong stuff. Diamond, maybe. I don't know. It's not my field."

  "Range is sixty-two thousand kilometers, increasing. It appears to be in orbit around Maleiva III."

  "What do you think?" asked Marcel. "Want to chase it down?"

  "Hell, yes. Let's go take a look."

  Marcel gave instructions to Bill, and let Hutch know what they were doing. "It sounds," she told him, "as if there's more to Deepsix than the Academy thinks."

  "A lot more, apparently. You sure that place down there looks preindustrial?"

  "It's all stone, mortar, and planks. Right out of the Middle Ages."

  "Okay," he said. "By the way, it sounded as if Kellie found something a couple of minutes ago. But we got distracted."

  Hutch nodded. "I don't think what we have is quite as interesting as your pole. But it looks like an armored vest. It was in one of the cabinet drawers." She turned toward it so he could see it. Like everything else, it was in miniature. It would have been secured from behind, and was designed apparently to protect as low as the groin. It was severely corroded.

  Toni Hamner hated to admit to herself that she was bored, but it was true. She'd expected the expedition to be exciting. But she should have known it wouldn't work out that way: She'd been around the archeologists at Pinnacle and knew how deadly dull excavations could be. This, she'd thought, would be different. This time she would be with the first people in the door. She'd be there when the discoveries got made. But so far it had been just a lot of digging and dredging out of debris. Now, standing guard in the entrance to the tower, looking out across that flat dreary plain, she yearned for it to be over.

  A flight of birds passed overhead. They were brown, with long beaks, flying in formation. For a few seconds they filled the sky, and then they were gone, headed southwest.

  She let her mind drift back to the brief shipboard romance she'd been enjoying with Tom Scolari. She hadn't thought highly of Scolari in the beginning, but she'd begun to change her mind and was actually getting quite caught up with him when
they'd come here and she'd watched him turn his back on Hutch. That seemed to her to be mean-spirited. Or cowardly. She couldn't decide which.

  She was anxious to get home. To see old friends and restart her life. To see a few live shows. Go to an expensive restaurant again. (How long had it been?)

  Below, the digging went on.

  Hutch was taking a break when Marcel called to tell her how difficult it was to explain the presence of the construct. Could she keep an eye open for anything that indicated the inhabitants were more advanced than we were giving them credit for? She would, but she knew they'd find nothing high-tech near the tower.

  They'd opened a passageway behind the Astronomer's apartment, and were now engaged in widening it. The work went slowly. Hutch had brought containers and digging implements so that they weren't entirely dependent on the lasers, which were dangerous in the close confines of the corridor. They had to remove the rock, dirt, and ice, which entailed a lot of crawling around.

  It was only possible for one person at a time to dig in the passageway. A second carried away the debris, dragging it back through the Astronomer's apartment. A third picked it up there, hauled it through the connecting corridor and into the bottom of the tower, where he, or she, sorted through it looking for anything of value. They found a few shards, a knife, a broken shaft with a blade insert, and a couple of pieces of stone with engraved symbols. In time, as the bottom chamber began to fill up with detritus, they started carrying it up to the next level.

  Eventually, they brought in a collapsible worktable and set it up

  in the ground-level room. A plan of the site was hastily put together, and the locations of the artifacts were recorded thereon. The artifacts themselves were brought to the table to be tagged and bagged.

  The cabinet they'd found in the Astronomer's apartment was made of wood. It had inlays and metal hinges, a door pull and some fasteners. It also contained several scrolls, too far gone to risk trying to unroll. They put them in separate bags, and sealed them.

  "I can't see that it matters much," said Nightingale. "Nobody'll ever be able to read any of that."

  Hutch set the bags carefully off to one side. "You'd be surprised what they can do," she said.

  At midafternoon, Chiang, Hutch, and Toni went back down into the tunnel. Kellie was posted topside, and Nightingale stood guard at the tower entrance. He'd been there only a few minutes when a thing came out of a patch of trees several hundred meters to the south. It was on two legs, and it had feline grace and a feline appearance. Nightingale, who'd been standing out in the sunlight, scrambled inside. The cat stood for perhaps a minute looking toward the tower. Toward him. He wasn't sure whether it had seen him. But when it started walking casually in his direction, he alerted everyone. Within minutes, they were all in the doorway.

  It was moving across the plain as if it had nothing whatever to fear. "King of the hill," whispered Chiang, setting his cutter up a couple of notches.

  The creature was considerably taller than a human male and maybe twice the mass. It was a model of muscles and grace.

  "What do we do, boss?" asked Chiang.

  Right, thought Hutch. Remind me I'm in charge.

  It continued striding toward them, throwing a quick and unconcerned glance at the lander.

  Effective laser range was about five meters. They'd be able to smell its breath. "Randy," she said, "you know anything about this critter?"

  "Nothing whatever." Nightingale was standing well away from the entrance. "I'll tell you this, though. It's a cat. And cats are pretty much the same wherever you find them."

  "Which means what?" asked Chiang.

  "Anything smaller than they are, they eat."

  Marcel broke in: "Shoot it, Hutch. As soon as it gets close."

  She didn't have the option of firing a warning shot, because the cutter didn't produce a bang, or anything akin to it. Not that this thing looked as if it would be scared off by a loud noise.

  She was suddenly getting advice from everyone: "Be careful." "Look out." "Don't let it get too close."

  She picked up some profanity from Nightingale.

  There came a moment when it paused perceptibly, when its muscles tightened, when its weight shifted slightly. It had seen her.

  "Hutch." Marcel again. "What's happening?"

  No point hiding. "Stay out of sight," she told the others. And she stepped out in full view of the creature.

  The lips curled back, revealing more teeth. It came forward again. Hutch raised the weapon and leveled it.

  "Shoot, for God's sake!" said Nightingale.

  Hutch told him to be quiet. The cat's eyes brushed hers. She broke the connection, looked off to one side.

  She wanted to see a sign that it was in fact hostile. She wished it would drop down on all fours and charge. Or simply pick up its pace. Or raise its claws.

  It did none of these things. It just kept coming. And Hutch suspected it had no experience with weapons. It saw nothing she could do to harm it.

  She turned the cutter on the stone side of the building, activated the beam, scorched the rock, and brought the weapon level again.

  The creature stopped.

  Chiang stepped out beside her.

  It stood for several moments, uncertain.

  Hutch took a step forward,

  It began to back away.

  "It's no dummy," said Chiang.

  It angled off behind the lander, and it kept the vehicle between itself and the tower while it retreated back into the patch of woods from which it had come.

  It was a short day, of course, less than ten hours from dawn to dusk. Nobody was hungry when the sun went down, and, other than Nightingale, they wanted to stay with the job. Hutch brought them out of the tower anyhow.

  It had grown dark when they logged in their most recent finds.

  These consisted mostly of vases and utensils and a few tiny hunting knives. There was also an armchair and a pack that seemed to be full of fabric.

  They took the pack out to the lander cabin and secured everything else in the cargo bay. Then they called it a day and climbed inside.

  Hutch opened the bag and took out a small faded blue cloak. It was ribbed, with a ring and chain at the top to fasten the collar. In its own time, it might have been a deep purple. Now it was too washed-out to be sure. The cloth was brittle, and a small piece of it broke off in her hands. She passed the garment to Kellie, who bagged it.

  Next was a shirt.

  And a robe.

  Both were cut down the sides, presumably to accommodate limbs, but what those limbs might have looked like, or even how many there might have been, was impossible to know.

  They found leggings.

  And a pair of boots.

  The boots were disproportionately wide. "Duckfeet," said Kellie.

  Many of the garments sported decorations, sunbursts and diamond-shapes, representations apparently of flowers and trees, and various arcane symbols.

  They were delighted. Even Nightingale seemed to loosen up and find occasional reason to smile. They inventoried and packed everything, including the bag itself.

  "Not a bad day's work," said Toni, with a satisfied smirk.

  Hutch agreed. First day down, they'd done pretty well.

  The lander had a washroom about the size of a closet. It wasn't convenient, but it would be adequate to their needs.

  One by one, they retreated into its cozy confines to wash up and change clothes. There was a fair amount of grumbling during the process, especially from Chiang and Kellie, neither of whom could move easily inside it. Both eventually gave up and got dressed in the rear of the cabin.

  Hutch broke out the reddimeals. They had a choice among pork, chicken, fish cakes, hamburger steak, sauerbraten. The meals came with salads and snacks.

  She produced two candles, lit them, and killed the lights. Then she set out five glasses and a bottle of Avignon Blue. She uncorked it and filled the glasses. "To us," she said.

  The
y drank the second round to the owner of the bag who'd been thoughtful enough to leave it behind for them.

  When they'd finished and were sitting quietly in the candlelight, Hutch congratulated them for what they'd accomplished. "It'll be a short night," she said. "Dawn comes early here. But we can sleep a bit late if we need to.

  "Tomorrow, I want to change the emphasis of the search. The Academy will like what we've gotten so far. But time's limited. What we really need is to find something that'll shed some light on who these people were. On their history."

  "How do we do that?" asked Toni.

  "Look for engravings. Something with pictures on it. Writing. Symbols. Pictographs.

  "We probably won't find much in the way of documents on paper, or paperlike materials. We have the scrolls that somebody might be able to do something with, but what we really want is stuff that's clearly legible. Check pottery for symbols or pictures. Anything like that, we—" A queasy sensation blossomed in her stomach, something she couldn't quite get hold of. The candles flickered.

  "What was that?" asked Toni.

  They looked at one another.

  Tremor.

  She switched to Marcel's private channel. "I think," she told him, "we just experienced a minor quake."

  "Everybody okay?" he asked.

  "Yeah. It wasn't much. But it's not a good sign."

  "We have sensors on the ground. I'll check them, see what they say."

  "You were right," Marcel told her a few minutes later. "It was a 2.1."

  "How strong is that?"

  "Barely perceptible."

  "Scares birds," she said.

  "Yeah. I suppose."

  "I thought we weren't supposed to feel anything until the last day or so."

  "I don't think I ever said that, Hutch. But I did warn you that the tower area is not stable. You're sitting right on top of a fissure. The experts up here are telling me that it's not a good place to be with Morgan coming."

  "Morgan's still pretty far."

  "Not far enough. It's massive. Think Jupiter."

  "All right. We'll be careful."

  "Maybe you should leave. Get out of Dodge."