Chindi к-3

by Джек Макдевитт

  A coat of dust covered it, the roof, the hull, and the wings. It looked as if it had been there a long time. It looked part of the landscape, as solid and permanent as the rock wall. The wings were wider, rounder than those on the lander.

  Nick took some pictures, and Hutch looked curiously up at the hatch. Alyx could see Tor considering angles and guessed that he’d be out there without much delay to start a new canvas. She herself visualized it as a prop, and tried to imagine the songs that could be written about this first encounter with a ship from another civilization, running one of the tunes through her head already. It was pure starlight. She wasn’t the ideal composer, and she wished Ben Halver could be there to see it, or Amy Bissell. She couldn’t do anything about that, but she’d do the next best thing, sit with them and tell them what it had been like.

  The vehicle had a ladder. Big thick rungs, as thick as George’s forearms, and only three of them, spaced too far apart to be comfortable for a human.

  “You’re too close to the edge,” Nick told somebody. “Get back.”

  “How long you guess it’s been here?” Hutch asked her.

  She shrugged. How would she know? A while, though. It had gathered a lot of dust in a place with no discernible atmosphere. A couple of years? A thousand years?

  Nobody was talking. Nick was standing near the ladder, and he reached out tentatively and touched it, thereby making a piece of history. Tor had picked up a chunk of loose rock, had pulled it loose from the cliff, actually, and as she watched he dropped it over the edge. There was still a lot of little boy in Tor. Hutch and George just stood gazing up at those windows that stared back past them all, looking out over the rockscape, watching Autumn, which was framed between a saddle-shaped mountain and a peak that was thin and spindly and looked as if it might break off.

  There were windows on both levels of the house, one rounded into an oculus, and a deck ran along the front, angling past abutments and setbacks. The cupola towered over her, larger from this angle than it had appeared in the onboard images. And at ground level, directly in front of her, she saw the front door.

  It was a big front door.

  IT WAS TRANSPARENT. Or had been at one time, Alyx thought. Now it was under a heavy coat of dust. But when she wiped it with the heel of her hand, and turned her lamp on it, the light penetrated. She saw chairs. And tables and shelves. And pictures on the walls.

  And books!

  “I don’t believe it,” said George. “This is incredible!” He pressed his face against the glass.

  She pushed on the door, but George wasn’t going to allow anyone else to take any chances, so he gently nudged her out of the way and assumed the lead.

  It occurred to Alyx that they looked like a group doing a Sunday outing. George wore old jeans and a shirt with University of Michigan emblazoned across it, a pair of white canvas shoes, and a battered hat that might have been all the rage on campus forty years ago.

  Nick wore a hunter’s shirt, with lots of pockets (although they were all inaccessible because they were inside the energy field), and camouflage pants. Tor had a blue blazer with a police shield stitched on the left breast and an imprint on back that read Los Angeles Police Dept. When she asked where he’d gotten it, he explained that his brother was a homicide detective.

  Alyx, who prided herself on knowing how to dress for any occasion, had been taken aback by this one, which did have its unique features. She’d settled for a white blouse open at the throat, green slacks, and white gym shoes. The gym shoes didn’t quite work, but they were good for scrambling over rock and gravel. She’d added a red-and-green ribbon in honor of the season.

  Only Hutch, who wore a Memphis jumpsuit, seemed out of tune with the general holiday spirit.

  Like the spacecraft and the front door, the walls and windows of the house were buried under a thick coating of debris, which had drifted down from the mountaintop or the rings, or been kicked up by eruptions. Who knew?

  George hesitated in front of the door, looking for a way to open it.

  “Maybe we should knock first,” said Nick.

  Alyx stepped back and directed her lamp at the upper windows. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought curtains were drawn across them. And she saw a chair on the deck.

  It was big, by human dimensions, something that would have swallowed even George’s bulk. But the proportions were right. It appeared to be a casual chair, made from what might have been reeds strung together. Something like rattan, maybe. Dark green, almost black.

  “The place feels homey,” said Tor.

  It did. And for that reason, it seemed all the more alien.

  They milled about in front of the door while George looked for a way in. He finally acceded to Nick’s suggestion, and knocked. Dust fell from the grainy surface and floated to the ground.

  It was a strange feeling, standing out there as if they actually believed someone, or something, might come to the door. Hello, we were in the neighborhood and we thought we’d pop by. How’s it going?

  George knocked again, this time with a big grin. When nothing happened, he leaned against the door and pushed.

  Nick turned to Hutch. “Do you have your cutter?”

  “Not unless we have to,” she said.

  Tor stepped up to help. They pulled. Pushed.

  “It’s probably electronic,” said Hutch. “There should be a sensor here somewhere.”

  “That means it needs power,” said Nick.

  “Right.”

  “How about the upper deck?” asked Tor.

  “It’s a possibility.”

  It was high. It would have been almost at the third story in a human building. Tor backed off a few paces, set himself, and jumped. In the light gravity, he soared. Alyx thought yes! that’s going to look great in the show, music up and drum roll. Marvelous stuff.

  There was a handrail around the edge of the deck. Tor caught the bottom of it, swung awkwardly back and forth, and hauled himself up. Not very graceful. Not at all the way they’d do it in the show. But moments later he reported that he had a window open.

  He disappeared inside, to lots of advice about be careful and don’t break anything and watch your step. Alyx counted off the time, imagining all the terrible things that could happen to him, even if no hideous thing lurked inside, no angel, no bloodthirsty whatzis waiting out here for the first humans to arrive so it could have one for dinner. A stair could be loose, floorboards could be decayed after who knew how many years. The house could collapse on him. Or despite what they thought, there might still be power inside, something dangling from the ceiling that he wouldn’t notice in his excitement. Or there might even be an antiburglar device. Something to pursue him through the house.

  “What are you laughing about?” Hutch asked her.

  “Just wondering why anybody out here would need to worry about burglars.”

  She saw the light from his lamp coming down a staircase. Then he was at the door.

  “No good,” he said. “I can’t open it from this side either.”

  “You’re right about the burglars,” said Hutch, who was moving along the front testing windows. She found one that must have been loose, fumbled with it for a few moments, then pulled the window out and laid it on the ground.

  They climbed through, one by one, into a living room. There were upholstered chairs and side tables made of something that looked like wood and probably was wood. And a sofa and curtains and bookshelves crowded with books! Everything was on a scale about half again as large as Alyx was accustomed to.

  Behind the sofa, a large framed picture hung on the wall, but she couldn’t see what its subject was. Tor took off his vest and used it to wipe the dust away. It was hard to make out, but it looked like a landscape. “It’ll need enhancement,” said Nick, smiling at the understatement.

  “That’s probably not a good idea,” Hutch cautioned him.

  “I’ll be gentle,” he said.

  It was a big room, the walls far apart,
the ceiling quite high. She gazed up at the shelves. And across at the curtains. There was even something that might have been a desk. The walls were paneled in a bilious gray-green, but Alyx thought it wasn’t that the occupants had possessed egregious taste as that the years had attacked whatever color scheme they’d used. Tor was methodically trying to wipe down other pictures. She was able to make out a waterfall in one, but nothing more, and even that was uncertain. While he continued, she touched one of the drapes with her fingertips, very carefully, she thought, only to see it disintegrate and turn to powder.

  “Here’s one,” said Tor. He’d found a picture that wasn’t completely faded. But maybe it should have been. It was a portrait of something vaguely human, wearing a cowl, and staring directly out of the frame with an alligator smile and baleful eyes that retained the personality of the subject despite the apparent age of the work.

  “Self-portrait,” Nick joked uneasily. Alyx shivered and told herself it was the condition of the portrait that rendered its subject so demonic. It lacked only a scythe.

  In fact it seemed unlikely that a painting in the living room—which this seemed to be—would be of anything other than one of the occupants. They all gathered around it, and Alyx found herself afterward staying close to the others.

  They were transfixed by the books. Thick, heavy tomes, mostly stacked on shelves, some lying on tabletops. The bindings were stiff with age, but might once have been soft and pliable. One lay open.

  “Magnificent,” said Hutch.

  They were in a vacuum, so things like books would probably last indefinitely, unless the paper contained its own acids. Nevertheless, they kept a respectful distance from the open volume, careful not to touch it, fearful lest it crumble. The open pages were thick with dust. Hutch tried to brush it away with her hand, but it was useless. Alyx didn’t think anyone would ever read what was on those pages.

  Here and there she could make out a squiggle, a line of print. And there was even a notation, apparently entered by hand. (Or by claw or tentacle or who knew what?) It was halfway down the left page, and consisted of a few characters, a couple of words, maybe. This guy is full of it, Alyx interpreted liberally. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  Hutch took pictures, and then tried turning to a new page. But the book was like a piece of rock. “They’re frozen together,” she said.

  Tor reached for a volume on one of the shelves. It wouldn’t come. Wouldn’t move.

  There were candles in candlestick holders. Nick found a panel on one of the side tables and opened it. It only came partway, but beneath it were a set of punch buttons, a press pad, and a gauge. He looked at Alyx and shrugged. Sound system? Climate control? Window opener?

  She found herself looking up the stairway Tor had used. Another descended to a lower level.

  Everything was eerily familiar. It could almost have been her uncle’s den in Wichita Falls, except that the room and the furniture were too big. And, of course, that it was frozen solid. She pushed on the seat of one of the armchairs. It seemed secure enough, and she was tempted to climb up on it, try it out, but it was too dusty. When they did the show, she decided, they’d have to eliminate the dust.

  The carpet had lost whatever color and texture it might once have had. It was hard now, frozen, whiskery. Pieces of it broke underfoot.

  Cushions and pads were scattered about the furniture, and a quilt was thrown casually over one of the chairs. But they were all like rocks.

  The front wall, in better times, would have presented a magnificent view. The door itself, on the left side of the wall, was transparent. It had flanking windows. A large oculus dominated the center of the wall, and still another long window was at the far end on the right. The room had clearly been designed to take advantage of the sky show. Alyx looked again at the image in the portrait and wondered whether, despite its terrifying appearance, she would not have found some areas of common ground with the subject. Then she remembered the angels.

  The chairs were angled toward each other, and, as one would have expected, pointed out so that their occupants could take advantage of the view. The fabric was hard, frozen, decorated with a rising (or setting) sun.

  They found more electronic controls concealed in other tabletops and in cabinets. But there was no easy way to determine their purpose.

  Alyx wondered whether there might be computer records somewhere, a diary perhaps, or a journal. When she suggested the possibility to Nick he shook his head. “If the occupants kept any kind of log or record, we’ll have to hope they did it with pen and ink.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Lasts longer.”

  THE ROOM LACKED only a fireplace.

  They spread out, everyone speaking quietly, whispering, as if they were in a sacred site. Alyx wandered through several rooms and found two more books that had been left open. “It must have been nice here,” she told Hutch. “When the systems were working.”

  Hutch nodded. “We go looking for aliens, but it seems to be our own face looking back at us.”

  George was ecstatic. “We didn’t get here in time to talk to them,” he said, “but we’ve done the next best thing.” He reached up carefully and touched a thick discolored volume that had fallen over. He tried to lift it but it wouldn’t come free, so he settled for pressing his index finger against the spine, and drawing it down the length of the cover. “What an ideal Christmas present for us.”

  Nick nodded. “Once we figure how to thaw them out. You think we can do that without damaging them, George?” That was directed at least partly at Hutch, who was standing off to one side.

  “I’m pretty sure they can do it,” said Hutch. “Though I’ve never seen a case like this before.”

  “You don’t think we could try it, do you? Maybe just take a few back to the Memphis and leave them at room temperature for a while?”

  “It’s not a good idea, Nick.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the people who come after us are going to want to know who the occupants were, how long they were here, where they came from. They’ll need all the evidence they can scrape together. Think of this place as a murder scene. Right now, we’re mucking up the footprints.”

  “But it’s really hard to see what harm we can do.”

  “Nick,” said George, “let it go.”

  “Do things the right way now,” said Hutch, “and we’ll preserve whatever can be preserved.” She gazed around at the lines of books. “Eventually this will get rescued. And maybe translated and put into some kind of context. You’ll have as much access to it as you could want. On the other hand…”

  “Okay,” he said. “But I hate to wait years to find out what this is about. And that’s what it’ll take, you know.”

  “So what do we do with the books?” asked Tor.

  “Leave them as they are. For whoever comes after us.”

  THE SITE SEEMED safe enough, so neither Hutch nor George raised an objection when they wandered off to more distant parts of the building. Just be careful. Don’t break anything. The place projected a warmth against the vast desolation outside. To Alyx, it felt like home, like a chapel, like the warm kind of refuge one only knows in childhood. It might be that the larger gauge, the big sofas and tables, the shelves filled with books, were summoning memories long forgotten. She felt like a little girl again.

  It was a good spot to spend Christmas Eve.

  A PASSAGEWAY INTO the back of the house opened into a dining area. Table and chairs were of the same scale as the rest of the furnishings. The table was carved. Leaves and vegetation and fruit decorated the side panels.

  Tor had opened a cabinet that was stacked with plates the size of serving dishes. And a fork you could have used to bring down a steer. There were cups and bowls and knives. “Everything cleaned and put away,” he said.

  Alyx looked around the big pantry. “As if they knew they weren’t coming back.”

  “Or they were serious about being neat.
”

  There was another stairway in back, descending. Tor threw his light down it. “Food came from here.”

  “Is there some still there?” she asked.

  “Packed away. But it looks a trifle dry.”

  “I guess it would.”

  Sleeping quarters were on the second level. Alyx and Hutch went upstairs, circled the landing, and entered a room on the eastern side. She caught her breath. A big bed stood in the center of the chamber. A big bed. Large enough for eight people. It had been made, pillows plumped up, a blanket drawn carefully over the linen. But it was stiff and pale with age. The bed looked, not exactly collapsed, but folded in on itself. There were shelves at its head, on either side. Each shelf had a lamp. There were also a couple of books, a notebook, and a writing instrument. A pen.

  Around the perimeter of the room, she saw cabinets, a desk, a couple of side tables. A door opened off to a washroom. And she found the biggest walk-in closet she’d ever seen. But only a few rags remained hanging.

  Hutch looked, but did not touch. Alyx could make out a robe and a pair of leggings. Two different sizes, she thought.

  “The correct number of limbs,” said Hutch.

  There was one more bedroom, and another closet with fragments of apparel.

  “I think we’ve settled one issue,” she told Hutch.

  “What’s that?”

  “There were two of them here.”

  One large, one small. One male, one female. Alyx had a good imagination, and she could visualize the garments in better times, red and gold robes, say, and leggings that were summer green.

  They also found several pairs of shoes. More like moccasins, actually. Size thirties, she thought. And a couple of hats. Not in very good condition, of course, but recognizable for what they were. One looked like a cap that Robin Hood might have worn. It even had a place to put a feather.

  Alyx had half expected to find remains on the upper level. She kept wondering about the lander waiting outside for someone who never showed up. “I think they’re here somewhere, Hutch,” she said. Maybe up in the cupola. But even when they climbed a spiral staircase up to that highest point in the house, it was only another room, a kind of den, windows on all sides, chairs that looked lush but were rock hard, a display screen, and more books.