The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Meklos hoped his shock hadn’t shown on his face. He glanced at Chavo who shrugged. Apparently he hadn’t known either.

  Declan had moved slightly into a more defensive position. Valma watched warily from the side of the path.

  “We need to search your packs,” Meklos said.

  “Sure,” Salvino said.

  She slid her pack off her shoulders and set it on the ground. Bruget did the same, opening his quickly, then stepping back.

  Salvino stepped back as well. They’d clearly been searched many times before.

  “We’ll need to search you as well,” Declan said.

  They both nodded.

  Valma watched. Meklos had been shot once during a search. He’d been so focused on the search that he forgot to keep an eye on the people whose items he was going through. Ever since, he had three people on a potential search: two to search and one to watch.

  The packs were a revelation. He’d worked with water divers before. They always had breathing equipment, some kind of environmental suit, and supplies, but these two also had recording technology, a variety of lights, and special sonar. He didn’t see the breathing equipment.

  He held up one of the sonar pieces. “You’ll have to clear that with Dr. Reese. You might be operating it too close to the Spires.”

  As he mentioned the Spires, both Salvino and Bruget looked up, their mouths open slightly.

  Declan ignored the movement. He continued the hands-on search, then followed it with a full body scan.

  “Clean,” he said.

  Meklos pulled out one of the suits. “This seems more like a space diving suit than a water diving suit.”

  Salvino nodded. “It’s made specially for cave diving,” she said. “You can get trapped in a very small space in a cave, and you need to survive, sometimes for a day or more, while you’re waiting for your partner to go for help. Which is why, you’ll note, we also have an extra suit, in case there are divers above who could assist.”

  Meklos wasn’t sure he believed the explanation. He had done water diving himself, but never with a suit this thin. Suits like this worked best in the vacuum of space. The oxygen was threaded through the material instead of in sturdy containers worn at the hip.

  He always thought suits like this dangerous because they could rip so easily, which would disturb the oxygen flow.

  Still, he noted the make of the suits, and the design number. He would vet those as well.

  Otherwise he found nothing in the packs. He slid them back to their owners for repacking.

  The other thing he noticed about the packs was that they had no room for extras. Everything inside had a purpose for this trip, and there was no way any of it could be left behind.

  If these two people wanted to smuggle something out of the City of Denon, then they would have to do it by leaving all of their equipment behind.

  “Okay,” he said after catching Declan’s nod. “You’re ready to go up. Declan and Valma will join you. Chavo here will give you both the speech about the Spires as you climb. If you need more water, say so now. It’ll only get hotter the higher we go.”

  Neither Salvino nor Bruget looked surprised when he said that, which bothered him. He had been surprised about the warmth up top, and he had researched the Naramzin Mountain Range as well as the Spires.

  Maybe their research was more thorough.

  Or maybe they weren’t just experts in cave diving. Maybe they were experts in something else as well.

  He hoped he would have enough time to find out.

  12

  Navi climbed slowly, pretending she wasn’t familiar with the path. In truth, she’d studied it for nearly a week. The path and the Spires and the ground around it all, as well as the designated areas.

  She also had a complete map of the caverns, made with her scanning equipment. The deep exploration ship was where she had left it, with her people inside. They could no longer send her updates, but she didn’t need them. Unless there were cave ins or some serious problems (and, honestly, wouldn’t the cave-ins have shown up in the scan?), all they had to do was wait for her all-clear.

  She could finally understand why Zeigler had fallen in love with this place. The light alone was refreshing, even though it was amazingly bright. The Spires were spectacular. She was actually excited about seeing the city.

  The diving worried her—she hadn’t done anything like that in a long time—but it would end quickly. She had lied about the timing to that security guard. These caverns and passageways were too honeycombed to get lost in for long. As long as she had a partner and as long as they were vigilant about going one at a time, only one could get trapped. And they had the equipment to get that person out, which the guard hadn’t really said anything about.

  Maybe he hadn’t noticed.

  More likely, her ruse was working.

  She wasn’t sure how long it would. That guard looked smarter than she liked. And while all of the information she had set up on nearby databases about her cave diving experience was true, it wasn’t complete. She had left off dates and travel times because they were too far apart for a professional cave diver.

  Someone smart might also realize that most of her cave diving experience was near archeological digs like this one. She’d tried to cover it in the bio she’d created—saying that she specialized in diving digs, but she wasn’t sure that was enough.

  And since she’d used her own name, there was always the possibility that someone who dug deep enough might find out how she really made her living.

  Then she’d be in trouble.

  But she wasn’t going to think about that. She was going in, she was going to inspect the site, she would do her dive, and she would leave.

  After that, she would decide what to do next.

  13

  The information on the cave divers was clean, but sparse. Meklos didn’t like sparse. It was his experience that sparse was rare. In general, there was too much information on most people, and even more on most businesses.

  Meklos was hunched over the control board, looking at an actual screen. The command center was quiet. He was alone in here.

  He hadn’t worked on equipment this old in quite a while. He hated how slow the information flow was. He had a limited amount of time, and the system itself was holding him back.

  The fact that he could only find the necessary information on the cave divers made him suspicious. It seemed like information had been removed from their bios.

  He could always find added information. Added information announced itself, often by being in the wrong place. Added information also had the wrong or misleading dates, or dates that didn’t somehow jibe with other dates already in the biographical information.

  But when information was removed, the gaps weren’t as obvious. The gaps could simply be that: gaps. It would take time he didn’t have to prove that the missing information was somehow important.

  He would have done all of that if he had been consulted before Dr. Reese hired these people. But he was brought in afterwards, and not asked to doublecheck them.

  If Dr. Reese had problems with her cave divers, those problems would be her own fault. He had to file a report for Scholars—the standard weekly update—and he would note the lack of consultation.

  He would also remark that, even though Dr. Reese had requested a security team, she didn’t really seem to want one. She certainly wasn’t working with him, and that made his job that much harder.

  He would also make note of the caves.

  He sighed. One reason he couldn’t properly vet the cave divers was that he wanted to see what he could find on the caves. He had a hunch that Dr. Reese would lie to him about them.

  So far as he could tell, no one knew that caves existed beneath the City of Denon.

  Some academic from a college too small to be in the Scholar’s system postulated that caves existed beneath the city; he figured it was the only way the ancients could survive all the sieges. He also postulated
a river running through those caves as well.

  But that was just an hypothesis, not fact.

  Meklos figured if Dr. Reese had hired cave divers, she had found caves—and they were filled with water.

  He wondered what else she was searching for.

  He doubted she would tell him.

  He could only hope that he would figure it out before there was any trouble.

  But he even doubted that.

  14

  By the time they’d reached the City of Denon, Navi was exhausted. She was getting too old for this much exercise, particularly in an environment as hostile as this one. The heat was oppressive, the light brighter than anything she could have imagined. Her pack’s normal weight seemed too much for her.

  Too many months on the ship, doing exercise in artificial gravity, and not enough time planetside. She hoped she didn’t show it.

  Because she didn’t want to be here any longer than she needed to. Infiltration operations went best when they were quick and dirty.

  Just coming down the trail, she saw more than she expected. The security team’s automatic tents were sophisticated and expensive. This wasn’t some low-rent team, but one that obviously came highly recommended.

  That made her nervous. She had been right to worry about Verr, the head of security. He clearly had the smarts—and the wherewithal—to break through her information screens.

  If he had enough time.

  The key was to make sure he didn’t have enough time.

  She took in as much information as she could. Roye had surreptitiously recorded the Spires, which were so much more impressive in person than they ever could be on any holographic representation.

  The city was remarkably well preserved. Parts still hadn’t been uncovered yet, of course, and might not be for some time. But the way that the light reflected off the cleansed buildings suggested this place had been amazing in its day.

  It was amazing now.

  And it was filled with unrecorded treasures. Things that could be sold for unbelievable prices to collectors and never get recorded as stolen.

  If Zeigler was right about the caves—that they had once been a museum for war trophies—then the number of unrecorded treasures would increase exponentially.

  The little guide, Chavo, had taken them to a small undecorated house at the edge of the city. Navi got the message. There was nothing here for them to steal. In fact, if they weren’t that bright and didn’t look around, they might think their house representative—that the ancient Denonites preferred unadorned houses and buildings, that the treasure would be the city itself and not the wares housed within.

  She knew better.

  The Denonites had spread their style throughout this part of the sector. When they conquered a nation, they kept troops onsite until the nation was completely plundered. Sometimes that took decades.

  So the Denonites made themselves at home, building houses like this one—on one floor, with one or two bedrooms, a living area, and a nice kitchen. Only every single part of the building had decoration, be it a wall painting or a small flower-decorated cornice or a statue to hide a particularly mundane corner.

  Those treasures, in those conquered cities, had been recorded long ago.

  It was the heart of the Denonite empire that hadn’t been found—until Dr. Gabrielle Reese and her team of scholars stumbled upon the ancient city of Denon itself.

  Roye had already made himself at home here. He’d given them both water and some nutrient bars, then slathered oil on his skin. She needed to do the same.

  He was studying her as she moved around the house, getting her bearings. Chavo would be back soon to take them to meet Dr. Reese and discuss the job ahead.

  Navi hoped Dr. Reese would provide dinner, because the nutrient bars weren’t going to hold her for long.

  “We can postpone the dive for a day or two,” Roye said. “Get our bearings and do this right.”

  “It’s not about the dive,” Navi said. “We can’t stay here long.”

  He continued to stare at her. “If we’re too tired, we’ll make mistakes.”

  She smiled at him. “The dive’ll be safe enough. The suits will protect us.”

  He shook his head.

  “I programmed them with the maps,” she said. “The suits’ll get us out, even if we’re unconscious. Someone will find us. We’ll be fine.”

  “One extra day,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  She thought of that guard’s face, the look he had gotten when she mentioned cave diving. Something had happened just behind his eyes, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  “No,” she said. “We dive and then we leave. That’s all.”

  “All right,” Roye said, shaking his head. He didn’t have to add that he disagreed with her.

  She already knew.

  15

  “When were you going to tell me about the caves?”

  Gabrielle jumped. She thought she was alone in the temple. She was testing her new system, placing items in their designated areas. Then she had gone to the back and cleaned a small elaborate vase.

  She was just drying off her hands, when Meklos interrupted her.

  He was standing just outside her work area, hands on his hips, his shirt covered in sweat. His boots had left a mixture of white and red dust on the image of the Spires, dust that glommed together wherever his sweat dripped onto it.

  “You’re making a mess,” she said.

  She continued drying her hands so that he couldn’t see how they were shaking. She hadn’t expected him to confront her about this. She had already told him she was hiring experts. He shouldn’t have questioned them.

  Her word should have been enough.

  “Caves,” he said. “Tell me about the caves.”

  She shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. They’re caves.”

  “If they’re just caves, why did you hire divers?” he asked.

  She sighed. She wanted him to feel her exasperation so that he wouldn’t ask too many more questions.

  “Because,” she said, “the caves are full of water. I want to see if that water comes from a natural stream or if it is something that will undermine the entire city. That’s somewhat important.”

  “More important than you know,” he said, “since caves have branches, and they’re not always logical.”

  “So?” she asked.

  “So people can either enter and leave this city through caves. Or haven’t you thought of that?”

  She didn’t like his tone. And, if she were honest with herself, she would have to admit she didn’t like him.

  Hiring the guards had been a mistake. She should have done so long after she knew exactly what kind of treasures she had. And then she should have hired some kind of escort, not someone to guard the city itself.

  “They can’t get in and out,” she said slowly, as if he were a particularly stupid child. “The caves are full of water.”

  “I would like to see them,” he said.

  “Well, so would I,” she said, “but I’m not qualified to dive them. Are you?”

  He glared at her. “Your experts have thin resumes.”

  He didn’t exactly answer her, which she did not appreciate.

  “And your resume is a little too thick,” she said. “We really don’t need this level of security.”

  He stared at her for a moment. He looked as exasperated as she felt.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Hire someone else—someone who’ll stand where you tell them to and march where you want them to and look the other way when you ask them to. When that group arrives, we’ll leave. Okay?”

  It was what she wanted. It was what she needed. If she could figure out how, she’d ask him and his team to leave immediately.

  But she was the one who had conjured up the threat. She was the one who would have to live with this horribly overexperienced security team until someone better arrived.

  “Yes,” she said. �
��I think that would be for the best.”

  16

  The cavern was unbelievably cold. Navi had noticed that the night before, and thought it simply the contrast between her overheated body and the natural chill any underground area had. But this chill was deeper than that.

  It made her relieved she had a space-equipped suit, one that could handle extreme cold with ease. Still, it was the thought of going into the cold, especially when she was so tired from the heat, that made her nervous.

  The cavern looked the same as it had the night before. Gabrielle Reese and her assistant had put lights everywhere, making passage down easy. As Navi walked with her equipment, she noted niches in the wall, but she didn’t have time to look at them closely.

  Neither did Roye. Nor could they show a lot of interest in the niches. Because they were here to see what was in the water, whether there were more caverns and maybe an underground river or, Gabrielle Reese had said disingenuously, “a settlement.”

  She hadn’t mentioned a museum or artifacts.

  But it seemed to Navi, just from the niches alone, that Zeigler’s idea of a museum was a good one. If the niches were manmade—and she guessed from their positions that they were—then they had once held items.

  She couldn’t get close enough to see if the items were recently removed. There would be markings in the dirt if they were.

  She and Roye hadn’t discussed this much the night before, in case they were overheard. But they did confirm the plan with a sort of shorthand.

  If they found nothing in the water except more caverns or the source of the water itself, then they would surface in the cavern and report directly to Gabrielle Reese as they (supposedly) were being paid to do.

  But if they found artifacts or evidence of another city, they would go out the passage ways and return to the camouflaged ship.

  It sounded simple. But the dive happened between those two choices.

  Now she wished she hadn’t been quite so impetuous.

  Now she wished she had hired someone else to go into the murky deep.

  17

  The caverns were empty and there were more of them than Meklos realized. Dr. Reese had told him that there were only a few caves—not these vast cathedral like spaces that could house hundreds, maybe thousands, of people.