“The interesting rooms are all below,” he said. “This upper level consists of several rooms much like this one—large and open. When I came here, they were furnished with numerous tables and chairs.”
“A waiting area,” Griffin suggested, “and processing center. It looks as if you’ve redecorated.”
The Old One shrugged slim shoulders. “I live here alone except for a few servants. There are only so many tables and chairs one person can use. However, these rooms are pleasant. The windows keep them well lit in the daytime. I’ve subdivided one of the larger rooms into a personal apartment. Another serves as an apartment for my servants. We built the kitchen outside, so as to not ruin this place with more smoke than we must but, when night falls, we must use candles or oil lanterns.”
He gestured regretfully toward high ceilings smudged with smoke. Adara smothered a smile. Bruin said smoke seasoned the old wooden beams of his house and helped preserve the meat. However, Adara knew that each spring Mistress Cheesemaker and her daughters scrubbed every inch of the walls and ceiling in their many-roomed house, then followed up with coat upon coat of whitewash. Idly, she wondered if they were somehow trying to maintain a standard left from days when that house had been lit with something other than fire.
“Fortunately,” the Old One continued, “the seegnur built this place to maintain the illusion that Artemis was extremely primitive, so there are stairs between each level, not merely ‘lifts.’”
He inflected the last word with a hint of pride, so Adara guessed that this was some term the seegnur must have used. Judging from how Terrell swallowed a grin, it wasn’t all that exotic.
So the Old One is no different than those townies who come up to the mountains and take pride in showing they know the difference between ram and ewe. The Old One must be more impressed by Griffin than he let on.
Griffin nodded. “Actually, stairways or ladders remain common the universe over. No one who has been trapped in a lift when the power goes out ever forgets the feeling of helplessness. It’s typical for buildings to have both.”
The Old One smiled. “So I have learned. However, here the stairs are large and obvious. The lifts are concealed. I believe the reverse would have been true on the home planets of the seegnur.”
“You have a point,” Griffin agreed.
The Old One paused at the top of a flight of stairs leading into murky depths. “I know my way around, so the light from the partial windows that extend to the next level is enough to guide me. However, I do have lanterns close at hand.”
“If you want me to read signs for you,” Griffin said, his tone showing far more impatience than he had ever offered Adara or Terrell, “then perhaps we had better have light.”
“Very well,” the Old One said.
He opened a cabinet cunningly concealed within the flat panel wall. From this he removed two oil lanterns, their bases and globes shaped from clear glass with hardly a bubble. The oil in the reservoirs was of the best type, a clear fluid that burned with almost no smoke, as long as the lantern’s wicks were properly trimmed. These were. The Old One—or more probably those unseen servants—knew how to take care of expensive equipment.
After lighting the lanterns with sulfur matches—another expensive luxury item—the Old One handed one of the lanterns to Terrell.
Does he remember I can see in the dark? Adara wondered. Or is he giving Terrell the factotum’s privilege as guide to the seegnur? Certainly, here, Griffin seems more like a seegnur than he has since Sand Shadow and I first pulled him from the landslide. Is Griffin putting on an act for the Old One or is this his truer nature?
Taking up the remaining lantern, the Old One began moving purposefully down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to open a set of doors. “These take us into various areas related to the landing and care of the shuttle craft. I have read that there were orbiting space stations where visitors were processed before being permitted to come to the surface. However, I will admit that I have no idea if this is true or what the processing would have entailed.”
“It is true,” Griffin said, inspecting the equipment. “Only one of the space stations remains and what is left is so wrecked that if you didn’t know what to look for, you never would guess. As for processing, well, human bodies carry a variety of contaminating factors within them. The final processing would have been to assure that visitors would not carry anything on or within them that could endanger either the inhabitants of the planet or visitors who came from another biosphere.”
Terrell, who had been uncharacteristically quiet to this point, spoke, his voice holding a faint tremor of uncertainty. “And you, Griffin? How were you processed if these space stations were missing? Did you carry contamination down to the surface?”
“No need to worry, my friend,” Griffin reassured him. “I read about the procedures and did them twice: once in Sierra orbit and once again before leaving my ship for the shuttle.”
“Well, that’s good,” Terrell said.
There was no mistaking the relief in his voice. Adara wondered at the intensity, but then a factotum’s education was very detailed in matters regarding the seegnur. Who knew what horror stories he had heard?
The Old One spoke as if he were fitting pieces into a puzzle he’d been building in his mind.
“So that’s what the processing was for. I understand why it was considered so important. Next, let me show you where the shuttles docked.”
The tour was interesting, Adara had to admit, though she understood why Griffin didn’t take long to become restless. After all, there were no shuttles here, only the cradles and slings that had held them while they rested in their journeys between the planet’s surface and the void.
“I’m certain,” Griffin said when the Old One paused, “that an engineer would be a better audience for all of this. It looks as if your seegnur used somewhat different arrangements than those with which I am familiar, but I can’t say why.”
“Perhaps because their technologies were so much more sophisticated than those you know?” Terrell suggested. “I remember your telling us that technology has changed—isn’t as advanced as it was in the days of the Old Empire.”
Griffin nodded. “It could be that, but it could be something simpler—a matter of esthetics, a change of design meant to accommodate a particular space.”
“And you wouldn’t be able to even guess?” the Old One asked. He sounded annoyed, as if Griffin Dane had failed to pass some sort of test. “Yet you have traveled on many shuttles. You even own one.”
Griffin chuckled ruefully. “I could guess, but guesses aren’t what you want. Guesses are what you already have. I’ve also owned thousands of pairs of shoes but, beyond the basics, I would have no idea how to make a pair or why one pair is better than another. I thought you wanted answers, not guesses.”
The Old One’s sulky expression faded. “I am the one who should apologize. You are the first visitor from beyond our atmosphere in half a millennium. It is ridiculous for me to concentrate on your extraterrestrial origin without remembering how much time has passed. Moreover, in my selfish excitement at having someone other than loremasters and the occasional friend with whom to share my treasures, I am forgetting that for you this tour has a more personal goal. Is there anything in particular you would like to see?”
Griffin’s response was prompt and eager. “Is there anything you’ve identified as a communications array? Even if they deliberately went primitive on the surface, the seegnur would have needed some way to contact vessels in orbit.”
Adara noticed how the pale grey of the Old One’s eyes flickered when Griffin spoke of the seegnur as somehow other than what he himself was. This, on top of his failure to be an instant expert regarding hangar bays, might be too great a diminishment of prestige. And the Old One was dangerous … In his eagerness, Griffin might forget this, but Adara remembered.
She glanced at Terrell to see if he shared her reaction, but his gaze was distracted, as if Griffi
n’s words about communications arrays had triggered some elusive memory. Saving Griffin’s status would be up to her.
“If your shuttle hadn’t crashed, you wouldn’t have had any trouble communicating with your ship, would you, Griffin?”
He indicated agreement. “None at all. If I’d had a moment to grab my portable comm unit from where I’d stowed it, I’d be fine. I’d never imagined the shuttle would be buried beyond my ability to get back into it.”
“Portable unit?” the Old One looked interested. “How large?”
Griffin tapped the back of his wrist. “I could have worn it strapped on here and you wouldn’t have thought it anything other than a bracelet. At home we use pieces so small they can be inserted under the skin. The only reason this unit had to be so large was because I wanted one with its own booster power. I didn’t think I could count on relay sats to enhance the signal.”
The Old One tilted his head in inquiry. “Powerful enough to reach a greater distance than the tops of the highest mountains, yet small enough to be worn as a bracelet? Your people’s technology must be nearly as powerful as that of the seegnur.”
To her relief, Adara saw that Griffin must have realized how close he had come to losing status, for this time he did not downplay Sierra’s achievements.
“Quite possibly but, as you noted, five hundred years is a long time. Even though the last ripples of the wars of dissolution did not cease for nearly a hundred years after the catastrophic events here on Artemis, changes in the relatively homogenous culture of that time would have happened long before.”
The Old One nodded wisely. “I believe there is a communications array on a lower level. Come this way.”
He lifted his lantern and set off, still musing aloud. “I wonder if the seegnur carried communications equipment with them and the Artemesians never realized it.”
“I doubt it,” Griffin replied. “It would have taken the fun out of the game.”
“The game?”
“The idea they were here to go primitive, to test themselves against the environment. A lot of the challenge goes out of something if there’s an easy fix.”
“But not all those who came here were looking to ‘go primitive,’ surely,” the Old One protested. “They came here for the sporting opportunities, or so I have read.”
Griffin shook his head. “Any of those sporting opportunities could have been had on a dozen other planets—in slightly modified form, perhaps, but there was ample hunting, shooting, sporting … No. The appeal of Artemis was twofold: its exclusivity and its elegant primitivism. Here you could go hunting big game in the tropics without witnessing disconcerting interruptions to your adventure like native children with insects crawling over their eyes, poor sanitation, or any number of other things that could take the romance right out of exploration. The challenges were real—never doubt that—however, the ugliness had been carefully removed.”
“I believe I understand,” the Old One said, his shoes sounding sharply against the stone surface of a new flight of descending stairs. “It is difficult for those of us who live in darkness and ignorance to understand the appeal of deliberately removing oneself from light, but if I try I can understand.”
Terrell said, “These seegnur were testing themselves, proving themselves strong when their machines might have made them wonder if they had become weak.”
“Yes,” Griffin agreed. “I think that was a big part of the appeal. I have brothers like that. They’ll labor up the side of a mountain with nothing but the simplest climbing gear, even though they could fly to the top in a few seconds.”
“You do not care for such challenges?” the Old One asked.
“I prefer intellectual challenges,” Griffin replied, “such as finding a planet lost to all the civilized worlds for some five hundred years. That’s my sort of mountain. Yours, too, or so I imagine, given the expertise you’ve acquired about the seegnur and their technologies. I’m not wrong, am I?”
The Old One laughed. “You’ve caught me out, Griffin Dane. My days of climbing mountains are over. The challenges that continually fascinate me are those of the mind.”
At the bottom of the staircase, he opened a single door. Then he turned right, opening the first door along a straight corridor.
“I have another couple of lanterns stored here,” he said. “If you will wait a moment, I’ll place them where they best illuminate the room.”
The light revealed a windowless, rectangular chamber furnished with ranks of long tables on which sat a variety of devices—at least Adara assumed they were devices. She really had no idea. The air in the room was unpleasantly close, so she hung back in the corridor.
“Why did they build without windows?” she asked. “Did they like stale air?”
Griffin was inspecting one of the devices and answered in an abstracted tone. “The air wouldn’t have been stale. The same technologies that enabled me to travel through the sterile void would have kept the air here as fresh—fresher even—than that outside.”
“Fresher?”
“Free from dust, pollen, smoke, and other pollutants,” Griffin said. “One of the many things the processing did was provide the visitors with some resistance to allergens. Otherwise, they would have spent all their time on Artemis blowing their noses and wiping streaming eyes.”
He fell silent. Adara sent a mental image to Sand Shadow, suggesting that the puma take advantage of the Old One’s distraction to prowl about and learn if this building connected elsewhere—especially to areas with lots of humans, especially women and children.
The puma responded with enthusiasm. Adara hadn’t been able to explain to Sand Shadow everything that Lynn had told them, but she had gotten across the idea that the Old One might be hiding things. Like any cat, Sand Shadow had her share of curiosity—and tremendous patience about satisfying it.
Terrell was also inspecting various bits of equipment. Adara decided that being underestimated by the Old One wouldn’t hurt in the least, so she leaned against the doorframe as if bored, listening to the men’s murmured comments.
“This might be useful,” Griffin said after a time. “It’s a backup unit.”
His next words might has well have been in another language for all Adara understood, but she gathered that the seegnur had apparently prepared for the long chance that their more sophisticated systems could break.
“Still,” Griffin ended, his excitement fading, “it’s a long shot. The nanobug contamination will have messed with this, too.”
“Is there any chance you can retrieve anything from your own shuttle to enable you to counteract this contamination?” the Old One asked.
Griffin had been open with Adara, Bruin, and Terrell about the countermeasures he had brought with him, now Adara was relieved to hear him hedge.
“I’m not sure. If I’d thought the shuttle held the answer, I would have tried to talk Bruin into having his students help me dig it out. What I’m really hoping to find is something left behind by the invaders—something they left against their own return. That would have been preventatively sealed.”
Both Terrell and the Old One looked interested.
“Hidden, though,” Terrell said. “They wouldn’t have wanted to chance someone finding it and using it.”
“But likely they would have hidden it here,” the Old One said. “As I told you, the facility itself was sealed until I figured out how to open it.”
“That unsealing must be a tale in itself,” Griffin said. “Do you have any maps? Maybe we could go back up where there is more light and inspect them so I’ll have a better idea of what is where. You could also show me some of those icons you think I might be able to read. Then, when it’s dark anyhow, we could come down.”
The combination of a chance to show off his work and Griffin’s promise to look at the icons proved the perfect bait. Adara saw that as clumsy as Griffin was on a forest trail or on horseback, he was plenty dexterous with this sort of travel.
; She called Sand Shadow back to her. By the time the men had doused some of the lanterns and emerged from the stifling room, the puma was rolled over on her back, apparently as bored as her companion.
Adara shaped the emotion her demiurge associated with discovery, adding to it the sense of inquiry.
In reply, Sand Shadow yawned, showing that even her furthest molars were in excellent shape. Her mind sent a complex picture of dark areas scented mostly with dust, odd traces of metals, and other stranger, unclassified scents. No women. No children. No other humans at all. Not even many insects, much less rodents. Creatures did not go where there was nothing to eat or drink. The Old One’s Sanctum, with its many doors and lack of windows, was a very sterile dwelling indeed.
“We’re going upstairs to look at some maps of this facility,” Griffin said, as if Adara hadn’t been standing just a few feet away, perfectly capable of hearing everything.
The Old One flashed a smile. “Later, Griffin is going to help me try to interpret some of the codes. You know, it might be more convenient if he relocated here.”
“We can do that,” Terrell said quickly, acting as if he assumed the invitation included all of them. “Cedric and Elaine are sweet, but I’ve had about enough of puppies and small children.”
Since just this morning Terrell had been sitting with a pup on one knee and a child on the other, Adara knew this for an excuse. Again she experienced the sensation of being in an unfamiliar forest where she didn’t know any of the trail markers.
Griffin and Terrell trusted you when we came down from Shepherd’s Call. Can’t you simply be grateful that their skills balance your weaknesses?
But she didn’t feel grateful. She felt awkward, inept, and, in consequence, resentful. The sensation that Sand Shadow was laughing at her didn’t help. Adara had to fight down a desire to say that she, at least, would be staying with the Trainers.
If the Old One realized he had been trapped into extending his invitation, he did not show it.
“There’s plenty of room here,” he said. “I keep a guest suite for when loremasters visit. I will have the servants ready that. You four can make your own arrangements within.”
Artemis Awakening Page 19
