Suddenly Miklos was climbing out. It was becoming brighter outside as the eclipse ended. “The red is for the canopy emergency,” Miklos shouted as he made his way to the ground.
Miklos stood and waved at him, but John was alone now, free to explore for as long as home was building its twin in the sky. For a moment he felt that he almost understood Blackfriar’s trust in him, but the thought threatened to grow into complexity and he dismissed it. He would be the first to see the planet, before the survey teams went out to see what had happened to the colonists.
He took the stick in his hands. The canopy came down and the two seats came up even with the rim, giving him an unrestricted view. The landscape around him was slightly blue through the tinted canopy.
Imperceptibly the gravitic field enveloped the flitter, lifting it upward swiftly. A thousand meters up, he turned the craft into the southeast and started a shallow climb, moving slowly to get the feel of the controls. He pressed the speed control and the land below began to rush by in a blur. The mountains stood around him, powerless to keep him in the valley.
16. The City
Clouds covered the suns as the flitter rushed into the southeast. He climbed higher to keep their warmth on his face. At midafternoon the brighter sun eclipsed its larger companion, reducing Lea’s illumination by slightly less than half. He caught a glimpse of the ocean just as the eclipse was ending. The water sparkled as if it were on fire.
A storm sat on the eastern horizon. As he flew lower over the plain, clouds obscured the suns again, turning the ocean dark blue. He turned the flitter eastward and dropped within a thousand meters of the beach, where powerful breakers crashed against the sand and rocks.
He was completely in control of the craft, sure of the freedom that it had given him. The afternoon’s sights had helped him forget himself. It was enough that the planet was strange, enough that he was curious about what he might find; nothing else existed.
The small display map indicated that he was now more than two thousand kilometers southeast of the mining site. He eased the craft away from the beach, slightly toward the northeast, hoping to glimpse the large city that Miklos had mentioned.
Storm clouds now took up half the sky in front of him, gray and black cumulus illuminated by silent flashes of lightning. The planet is alive, he thought, as much a system of living things as home.
He saw the city, a dark mass of towers sitting under the thunder-heads. The storm covered the whole sky as he flew closer and darted under the cloud ceiling. Rain began to hit the canopy. The lightning became more frequent, stabbing at the dark land below. The flitter cut through the rain without shaking, its gravitic field a vise holding it steady in relation to the planet’s surface.
The city was a ragged black outline against the leaden sky, receiving the torrent without protest. As the lightning flashed, he imagined the city to be a huge black spider crouching ahead. He could almost reach out and touch it, though he knew that it was still kilometers away.
He turned on the outside audio for a moment and heard the wind howling; thunder rumbled and cracked and died. The craft slowed to a drift over the city.
The towers held up more than one level. Huge holes gaped at him, black pits into the lower levels. The wind whistled through the city’s wounds. What suffering had been here? he wondered; the vast ruin was an external record of misery and decline.
He wafted toward a tower. A finger of lightning struck the top, hurling debris down into the ruin. He released the stick, leaving the flitter to hover while he cleared the map from the small screen to reveal the area directly below. In the moment of another flash, human figures ran across the wet surface.
He took the stick and landed the craft. For a moment he sat there, unsure of what to do next. Above him the clouds drove fast in the wind, covering the broken point of the tower. Where have I come to? What am I doing here? he asked himself.
As the rain lessened, he heard the aching groans of the city around him—metal grinding, slipping, breaking, and being pulled down somewhere below. It was a bass rumble in his stomach, the sound of dying things calling to him.
The canopy went up and he crawled out, making his way carefully down the footholds. The city shuddered as his feet touched the metallic surface. He took a deep breath of the damp air and looked up at the rushing clouds. Suddenly he felt a reversal of direction. For a moment the sky was down and the city was up; he was standing upside down on the outside of a round ball and at any moment the wind would blow him and the city away into the mists; but the moment passed and he steadied himself on his feet.
The rain was now a fine mist; the wind was losing its force. He wiped his face and walked toward the tower. There was a large hole in its side. Bracing himself, he looked inside; the darkness was impenetrable.
He turned and walked back toward the flitter. The sky was growing lighter as the storm passed. He looked to where the suns would be and saw only a patch of light. The wind was a cold breeze as he climbed into the flitter.
The sudden whistle of the communication link almost frightened him. He jumped into his seat and opened the line.
“John, this is Miklos. Just checking.”
“I’m in the city, two thousand kilometers southeast, thirty north of the ocean. What a wreck this place is. There hasn’t been a civil government here in ages. I’ve landed on the upper level near an old tower. There’s been some rain.”
“I know. Want to come home?”
“No. Is that all you called for?”
“Be careful,” Miklos said. “We can die just like any living thing.” He broke the connection.
John climbed out of the flitter, determined not to be frightened by Anastasian’s warning. He jumped the last step and turned to look at the tower.
Three figures stood in front of the large hole. Their hair was long and wet, and they watched him with dark eyes.
Unchanged humans, he thought, like me.
Sunlight broke through behind him. He turned around and saw the misshapen red suns setting in the west, bathing the city in a rich vermilion light, two broken yolks spilling orange-red plasma between them. The storm was disappearing into the south.
He turned to the strangers again and took a step toward them. They drew back, but stopped.
Looking more carefully, he saw that the one in the middle was a girl. She was wearing a crude tunic of coarse material, stitched together with black cord. The tunic came down below her knees; her feet were covered with boots made from the same kind of material, animal skin of some kind. She seemed distressed by his gaze.
Both males were shorter than John. He sensed their protectiveness of the girl. He raised a hand and smiled.
Slowly the girl started to raise her hand. One of the men said something to her, but she smiled and kept her hand up. John took another step forward. Both men stepped in front of her suddenly, but she said something to them in an angry tone. She pushed between them and came forward.
She stopped and looked up at him with dark blue eyes. There was a green tint in her black hair. She pointed to the flitter behind him, at the sky, and then at him. He nodded, and it seemed to be the response she wanted. She pointed to herself and said, “Anulka.”
“I’m John Bulero.”
“Imjonbulero?”
“Anulka,” he said, imitating her sound. She smiled at his effort, and for a moment he forgot her two companions.
Suddenly one of the men came up and tugged at her arm, while the other retreated toward the tower. Anulka pointed at the setting suns, then at the east, and at the place where she stood. He guessed that she wanted to meet here tomorrow, and nodded.
Then she turned and followed the two males. They climbed through the hole in the tower. He could go with them, he thought, but when he came and looked down into the breach, he saw her motioning for him not to follow. He watched as she made her way down the ladder on the inner wall. Her companions were lost in the darkness below her. In the moment before she disappeared, sh
e looked up at him again, this time with a look of determination.
He tried to imagine what there might be for them at the bottom of the vertical passage. How did these people live, and what did they know about their origins? What had happened on this planet during the last thousand years? Why did the colony fail? Who was this girl? What was it like to live here? She seemed so vital and alive, as if she enjoyed her way of life. The confidence of her manner was not what he had expected.
He turned and walked toward the flitter. The suns were now flattened balloons filled with red light; the larger one was just beginning to eclipse its companion, hiding the vast spillage of plasma between them.
Around him the towers of the city cast black shadows across the blue metal surface. He took a deep breath, feeling open to the world, a sense of possibility mixed with uneasiness.
He climbed into the flitter and sat back. Stars began to appear in the darkening sky, until the east was ablaze with more than a hundred bright points of light. Lea’s position just inside Praesepe gave it a night sky dominated by the stars of the cluster.
He turned down his seat and noted the food cupboard in the back of the cabin.
Can we help here? he asked himself as he lay back. Maybe I can do something before we leave. We might be here for a decade. It would not be hard to do a few things. He reached over and pulled a thermal blanket from its clip. Covering himself, he looked into the starry brightness overhead, feeling like an insect on a huge tabletop. The towers of the city were dark shapes around him, sentinels standing guard in the starlight.
The audio picked up noises from below, things just beneath his ability to hear; half-felt sensations came and went, moments of fear and excitement, and night sadness, all conspiring to keep him awake.
He fell asleep and woke up not knowing where he was; he was falling away from the unprotected outside of the planet, toward the suns. He opened his eyes, realizing that he was vulnerable under these quiet stars, but the thought of danger pleased him. In time he might want more than this new intensity, but for now the quickening of life’s pulse was what he wanted most; for the moment he would compromise and give himself to opposing things. Unplanned opportunities waited for him on this world, and he would discover them for himself.
17. Relations
White clouds sailed across a bright blue sky. His eyes were open for an instant before he became fully awake. He lifted his head and it seemed that the suns were rising in an effort to catch up with the clouds. The city around him was silvery blue and charcoal black, reflecting sunlight, clouds, and blue sky from a million metallic scraps and shards. He lay back and closed his eyes again, lost in the strangeness of awakening here. He might have lived here all his life; home was a dream from which he had just awakened, and in a moment he would remember everything….
He sat up and saw Anulka looking up at the flitter, hands on hips, smiling. She appeared older in daylight, more in control of herself.
The canopy lifted as he climbed out. In a moment he was standing in front of her.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hel-lo?’ she asked uncertainly, watching his face.
Feeling nervous, he looked around. Where the level was torn open, canyons opened into a daylit gloom. The metal plain of towers extended to the horizon in every direction except westward, where he saw some greenery. Slowly the colossus was toppling back into the soil; barring a major shift in the planet’s crust, there would be nothing left above ground in a million years. Yet even without its power and population, the city had a kind of life.
Anulka was looking at him questioningly, but with confidence. He smiled at her. There was not much he could say until he acquired a log of their everyday words; he would have to make one trip home to compare notes at the language terminal and undergo imprinting. When he returned, it would be possible to ask her fairly complex questions. He could reach the proficiency terminals from the flitter, but imprinting required a direct link to Humanity II.
Looking at Anulka, he felt that she was older than Margaret, although he knew that this could not be true. Despite the decaying city, the planet seemed youthful, growing unplanned, turning through its seasons, renewing itself within its cocoon of air, passing through one life after another, always changing in the timeless light of its suns. The life of the planet was something different from the beggarly life of its human inhabitants. The suns were a pair of wastrels, negligent gods dissipating their power into space, energy so abundant that even a small fraction would be enough to transform this world.
Anulka turned and motioned for him to follow her. He hesitated, then walked after her to the tower. She climbed into the opening. He stepped in after her and started down the ladder. There was more light in the shaft during the day, and his eyes adjusted quickly.
He looked down and saw her growing smaller beneath his feet. He quickened his pace down the rungs.
After a while he called her name and she answered with a questioning sound.
“Nothing,” he said. “I only wanted to hear your voice.”
She laughed.
There was an earthy smell in the shaft, as if something were decaying at the bottom. After what seemed a long time, he stopped and looked down. He saw her dark shape moving in a circle of light. She had reached bottom and was pacing as she waited for him.
He hurried, but when he reached bottom she was already leading the way into a long tunnel. He followed, remembering when as a child he had played in the engineering labyrinth under countryside. He remembered watching mysterious adults doing their work, persons who had been old a century before his birth.
Anulka led him to another shaft. As he made his way down the rungs of the ladder, he remembered the first time he had seen the generators at home, massive objects containing the power of stars, surrounded by mushroom-like gravities, ringed by feeders and converters. He imagined the internal fires of the planet below him and stopped; he looked down and could see no end to the shaft. What am I doing here? he asked himself as the possibility of danger became apparent. I could die here and no one would ever find me.
“Hel-looo!” she called up to him in a musical voice.
He continued, quickening his pace. It grew darker and the air became damp; he heard water running down the wall of the shaft. The rungs became sticky and cold. He slipped and landed on the next rung; the cold air hurt his lungs as he caught his breath.
He went down slowly, stepping carefully from rung to rung until his confidence returned. Reaching bottom, he stepped through a circular opening into a dimly lit room. Anulka was waiting for him. She turned and walked into another long passageway. He peered after her, saw the light at the end, and followed quickly.
They came out into daylight, onto ground covered with thick grass and tall weeds. John looked up and the sight startled him. He saw the sky through a massive breach in the city. A wedge had been cut out, exposing level after level on both sides. The area of open ground was at least two kilometers long and one kilometer wide, strewn with hundreds of pieces of glass, plastic junk, tiles, and large pieces of flooring. He looked up again at the open levels; beams and ragged platforms jutted into the air, threatening to break off and come crashing down.
Anulka was walking down a path through the weeds. He started after her. There was a fire and a tent ahead. People had once lived here, he thought, wondering how he would feel if home were somehow cut open like this city.
Anulka led him into the small camp and he recognized the two men sitting next to the fire; they had been with her on the previous night. There was a wooden table next to the tent. The surface was piled up with old books and canisters. Anulka motioned for him to sit by the fire. She went into the tent as he seated himself.
The man who came out with her was powerfully built, with white hair combed straight back and confined by a piece of cord. He wore a black shirt made of fine cloth; his pants were coarse and baggy, held up by a wide brown belt. He went to the fire and stepped into his brown boots, stomping h
ard on the ground to settle in. Then he turned and looked at John with a steady gaze. His face was lined and leathery, but there was someone familiar behind the dark tan.
Anulka pointed at the old giant and said, “Blakfar.”
“Jonbulero,” the big man said. He smiled and opened his palms toward John in greeting.
Sunlight came into the canyon, lighting up thousands of inner spaces on the right side of the cutaway, brightening the grass and weeds.
Blakfar lowered himself into the chair next to the table. “Old books,” he said, pointing. “City library, starry.” His Russo-Anglic was old, obviously acquired from reading. “Off-world?” he asked, pointing at the sky, then at John. It startled John to hear the language as a series of familiar sounds, triggering his imprinted memory of its structure and vocabulary.
John nodded, slowly accepting the idea that this was at least a relation of Blackfriar’s, a planet-weathered descendant of the man who had brought a starship across the great dark from Tau Ceti. John felt that he had come upon an old friend who had not changed, despite the centuries and unimaginable forces working against him.
Anulka spread a blanket next to the chair, and Blakfar motioned for him to sit down. John obeyed, rehearsing the words of the simple question that he wanted Blakfar to understand.
John pointed to the city around them, at the sky. “What happened here?”
The gray-haired man nodded with a sad smile. There was pain in his eyes, the memory of pride and accomplishment, living now only in those who could stumble through the old words.
Anulka’s two companions were looking at John suspiciously. They’re afraid of me, he thought.
Blakfar said, “Skyship from Ceti…more than hundred fathers ago…we left the ship in the sky…we built cities…war, sickness…”
John listened, understanding the old man less and less, catching a word here and there, enough to know that the cities had been abandoned, scientific skills lost when the population declined. Those alive now were completely dependent on the natural ecology. John doubted if there could be more than a million human beings on the planet.
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