by Allen Wold
It was made of what looked like gray metal and beige ceramic. A twisted blunt cone was connected to a sphere that was oblate at an angle to the cone. From this projected three curved, round-ended rods, each pointing in different directions.
Rikard picked it up. It seemed more like something to be held than put down on a table, but there was no obvious hand grip. Rikard handed it to Droagn, but it seemed so fragile in the Ahmear's large hands that he was afraid he might break it, so he handed it to Grayshard. In his gloved hand it was as clumsy as in Rikard's, but then he extended a bundle of fibers from between his cufiF and glove and held the sphere itself, with the cone and rods projecting between groups of tendrils.
"This feels right," he said.
"So it's meant to be held by tentacles rather than hands," Rikard said.
"So-it would seem, from this one sample."
"It gives us some insight about the builders," Rikard said. He put the object into a box on the floater, they closed the now-broken cupboard and went on.
Shortly after that they found a door to the next inner layer. The walls here were not only glossy but somewhat pearlescent as well. It was more compact than the two outer layers, with smaller and fewer chambers, and longer and narrower passages between.
And the rooms and chambers were no longer completely empty. In one there was a pedestal. In another they found a kind of low table. In a third were shelves. All the objects were made of metal, or metal and ceramic, and all of them felt oddly proportioned and placed. There were no chairs, nothing of wood or fabric or paper or any of the softer plastics. Rikard recorded everything.
When they came to another cabinet they opened it and found inside something like a scissors except that the blades were of unequal length and one of the handles projected at 90 degrees. There was also a flat plate with a geared knob that could be twisted. It produced no noticeable effect. And there was a piece of translucent crystal shaped like a hammer handle, with a dark streak inside it along the center around which a blue bead slid slowly from end to end. Rikard very carefully put these into the box with the first object they'd found.
In other rooms there were more of the low tables and shelves. "It begins to seem," Grayshard said, "that our now-vanished hosts had quite a low reach, as I would if I were not wearing this disguise. And yet the ceilings are high and the color signs are high."
"Long necks? Droagn suggested. "Or eyestalks perhaps.
They found access to another and more inward band, all pearly white with the occasional color streaks that, here, were somewhat more clearly defined, with sometimes subtle differences in shade from one end of a streak to another, or across it, and sometimes with fine hairlines of no color.
They went in farther, until the curvature of the shell became obvious in any of the longer passages. Still, it was hard to estimate how close to the center they were, and Rikard was sure that eventually they would come either to an open or solid core, probably the latter to provide support for the massive structure. But it made sense to keep on going down as well. If this place were a million years old, who knew how much of it was buried.
As they explored they learned that a particular color—a thin long streak of yellow with one pointed end—was associated with ramps, which were on the outer edge of the upper band of corridors and chambers, and hence on the inner edge of the lower band. But it was the blunt end of the mark that pointed in the direction the ramp could be found. It wasn't really much help, since as they continued around each hand they would inevitably find each ramp anyway, but it was something. And so they went lower, level after level, each level with a larger circumference than the one above.
After a while they found that the walls were now somewhat translucent, more pearly, and the color streaks, embedded in the outer layers of the surface and opaque, were now quite readable. The air became more humid, and somewhat musty smelling, or stale.
At last they could go down no farther. They found portals to the outer bands, and passed through eleven of them before they were stopped at the outer wall. They went around again, through larger rooms and halls, looking for the blue-gray signs for a door.
They didn't find them but they did find other signs in the outer walls, in three shades of blue. There were doors there, but Droagn could not open them. Somehow, they had all been locked or sealed.
"We're probably below ground level anyway," Grayshard said.
They returned to the core and started to circumnavigate it. There were none of the blue-gray smears that signified normal doors, but they did find one place where there was a small triple band of turquoise. It was a doorway, but it was locked. Droagn couldn't force it so they got out the stonecutter and broke it open easily. There was a narrow passage beyond, but it narrowed as it went inward and ended abruptly. There were no marks on the walls at all that, here, were not so much white as colorless.
They returned to the innermost band and went on around. They found another triple turquoise mark, and beyond it the same kind of dead-end passage.
"Why would they put a door on waste space," Rikard wondered, "unless it was used as a closet?"
"But then why was it locked? Droagn asked.
There were no more blue-gray marks here, and the turquoise marks didn't lead them where they wanted to go.
Rikard played back some of his recordings on a small monitor so they all could see them. The turquoise mark was three bands, the blue mark was three shades, and the thin blue-gray smear was—three shades superimposed? blue on gray on white?
"I think that's our clue," Rikard said. "Let's look for marks that are bluish and somehow composed of three parts."
But the only thing else they could find that was in three parts was russet—actually thin black, red, and white superimposed on each other. They broke it open, and there was a chamber beyond.
Beyond that were several more chambers of a much more restricted nature, but nothing else. Disappointed, they returned to the corridor.
"Let's stop a minute," Rikard said, "and try to figure out what's going on here. That mark had three components, and it was a door, but why the color change?"
"Perhaps," Droagn suggested, "blue signifies a passage, and a red mark means rooms."
"Easy enough to verify," Grayshard said.
They looked around and found another russet mark like the first. Beyond it, as before, were a sequence of small chambers becoming ever more cramped toward the center of the cone.
"At least they're consistent," Rikard said. "What else can we find in threes?"
They examined each color smear they saw, more closely this time as they looked for superimpositions and subtle distinctions. Most of the marks, whatever their color, were single smears, but there was a yellow smear that was pale canary at one end, darkening toward the middle, and nearly amber at the other end.
"How many colors does that count as? Droagn asked.
"Maybe just one," Grayshard said. "There are no seams."
"So," Rikard said, "let's look for three horizontal bands, vertically arranged or superimposed."
They found a green smear that, on closer inspection, proved to be blue and yellow superimposed. They passed it by. Then there was a sky-blue smear, composed of blue and white, and above it a second white smear, which made three altogether. Grayshard found the seams of a door, and beyond the portal was a much larger chamber with several side passages, but again, that was all there was.
"Maybe that's all there is altogether," Droagn said.
"Could be," Rikard said, "but I don't believe it."
"We've come all the way around," Grayshard said. He pointed to a smudge on the pearly floor, a mark made by Rikard's boot heel.
They went up the nearest ramp, started around, and at last, in a larger chamber, came to a smear composed of two shades of blue and one of thin black. They had to break the portal open, and beyond was a passage that did not narrow, and that penetrated deeper than the ones below to a very much inner band of very small rooms and passages. It was
very near the center, the circumferential walls were visibly curved. The passage was in the outside of the band, and the rooms were nearly wedges. It was very humid in there, and the walls were almost pinkish.
In the fourth room from the connecting passage they found things on the floor. There was a metal shape, obviously representing something organic, on little wheels. Nearby were several blocks of unusual shape, like pieces of a 3D jigsaw puzzle. Against the wall was a sequence of beads on a now-decomposed string.
Two rooms later they discovered a cabinet with an open shelf on the bottom, three shallow drawers, and a concave surface at the top with wings extending up at an angle at the sides and a mirror, now dark, at the back. In another room they found a shell-stone board inlaid with hexagons in red, cream, and olive stone, in a black frame, six hexes on a side. It looked like a game board, but there were no pieces.
Later they came on a disk on the floor one meter in diameter, divided into six segments, each of which could be pushed apart, though they were spring-loaded. Halfway around the shell of rooms and hallways they came to a large chamber with rods set into bases on the floor, each with a double sphere atop, the lower one with semirecessed buttons, the upper with a pattern of grills and vents, all arranged in a semicircle around a crystal hemisphere projecting from the wall.
"How about it?" Rikard said to Grayshard. "Does this make any sense to you?"
"Not a bit of it."
As they came back nearly to where they had entered they found yet another triple mark in pale and dark yellow and red. Grayshard found the seams, but before Droagn could start to break it in Grayshard said, "I think I can open it. It's not latched." And with only the strength of his fragile tendrils, he slowly pulled it toward him.
3
The passage on the other side led down gently toward what had to be the very core of the structure. The pearly surface of its walls was ornamented with compression sculpture in finely detailed flowing abstract patterns, and stained with many colors in streaks, smears, splotches, dots, and arcs. The walls were almost damp, and the light of the lamps glittered off the moisture on the complex surface, which here was translucent, and seemed to glow.
Rikard recorded the walls as completely as he could. As they proceeded slowly down the passage they tried to make sense of the patterns in shape and color, though each area of decoration seemed to bear no relationship to any other. A real-time playback wouldn't be very comprehensible, but stills could be taken showing every square meter of these complex walls.
"And there are two other cones just like this one," Grayshard said. He seemed to be as impressed by this place as Rikard.
"Maybe we're just lucky," Droagn said, "and picked the only cone that has a place like this."
"That's very unlikely," Rikard said. "And there are other cones elsewhere in this world, though they're not as well preserved, or as exposed as these three. Every one of them is a potential treasure trove."
They came at last to the end of the passage, closed by an ornamented portal that opened at their touch. Beyond, only dimly illuminated by their strong lights, was a huge chamber. The floor dished down toward the center, and there were other portals all around the periphery. The floor was divided into areas separated by low walls and differences in level, and pass ways proceeded from the portals to the center. In each of the areas was an object of some sort. Some of them were utterly ruined, some were almost pristine in appearance.
They worked their way toward the center, moving from one display to another, marveling at what they found. One object had a heavy base, a flexible neck, on the end of which was a sphere with a drill bit. A smaller item was a flat-bottomed box with a projecting blade and a vertical rod handle. There was something like a set of dumbbells connected by electrical cables to what might have been a generator box. There were machines of heavy iron or steel, shaped like a very thick X, with valves, rods, and levers sticking out, stained apertures, and a shaft that projected from the intersection. Another machine had a heavy base, a flexible neck ending in a sphere that had a C-shaped protrusion with a hole in the lower part of the C and a needle in the upper part. On a pedestal was a small object consisting of a sharp spike, which rested in a socket, with a branched armature that had a sharp-edged tube on one side and a rosette of sharp blades on the other, connected by gears to a crank.
There were sculptures. One was composed of three large rectangles that intersected each other at right angles, each with a small disk at right angles to itself at the outer edge, all supported at an angle by a spike. There was something like broad limp noodles with feathery edges knotted at the end of an inverted fishhook. One sculpture represented a humanoid shape but with exaggerated feet and arms, tiny mouth and eyes, bulging body—possibly a Zapeth? Others were in the form of an octopus standing on four legs and manipulating batons and balls with another four legs.
In one place was a base plate with two A-frames that supported a crossbar from which hung a triple trapeze, the bars connected by soft cords. Another large object had a hollow base the size of a dining-room table with an upright at one end that supported an identical base at a height of one and a half meters. There was a circular tabletop on a pedestal with drawers all around, each drawer wedge-shaped and tracked on the left side.
And there were other things that were even less identifiable, such as an irregularly stacked pile of tetrahedral plates; a collection of small objects consisting of spheres piled on top of one another, no two the same; a wire frame outlining a hemisphere supporting a column supporting a smaller sphere with four long wires extending below the smaller sphere; and something that looked like a wet blanket except that it was made of crystal.
Anything that was small and intact they took and put into Rikard's 4D case. That still left ninety percent of the undamaged objects still in their places, not counting those in the areas they hadn't visited yet. But when they got near the center of the chamber, they found more sculptures, and these took all their attention.
They were of molluskoid beings, with a large snailfoot surmounted by a sacklike body with a pouch mouth in front and above that a tapering stalk up to about two meters with two pairs of strong tentacles and a single huge cyclopean eye. Rikard glanced back at the wire frame sculpture. The number and realism of these sculptures indicated that they were of more than just casual importance.
Most of the cyclopean molluskoids presented a front and a back with symmetrical right and left sides, but other examples showed that that was merely a convention, that these beings could be completely radial with the eye central on a pedestal foot and with the tentacles around the perimeter, or they could be asymmetrical, with a front and back but with all limbs on one side and the mouth on the other, and so on. Their bodies were amorphous, though with a single sacklike shape instead of a bundle of fibers the way Grayshard's was,, but they were almost as variable as Grayshard, in their own way.
Singles, groups, in a variety of postures but mostly simply presented, here were the people of this place. Some were miniatures, made of a material so dense that only Droagn could lift them. A few were oversize, in more natural materials, but effectively unmovable. Some they deduced to be at normal scale, judging by other objects represented in the sculpture that corresponded to objects they had seen elsewhere. But none of them would fit in the case. Rikard and his companions lost all interest in the rest as they examined and discussed this new find.
"Precursor races are my specialty," Rikard said once, "but I've never run across anything like this in any text I've ever read."
"They disappeared an awful long time ago," Droagn said.
"So did your people, but we knew about them. And the Tschagan, they were nowhere near as important, but we had records and representations of them too. Have you seen their like before?"
"No, but then I'm not a scholar. But no, in my time and place there was nobody like this, not even vaguely."
Rikard turned to Gray shard, but the Vaashka stood motionless.
"They
are completely unfamiliar to me," he said. "I know other molluskoid species—and they are rare—but not this one."
"We've got an awful lot of questions to answer here," Rikard said, "but I'm afraid now is not the time to do it. We'll have to make sure this place is protected, then we can start to try to find out who they were, where they came from, where they are now, and what happened to them." He felt large, as if the wonder of this discovery were inflating him like a balloon.
"And until then?" Grayshard asked. "We take what we can and get out of here." Reluctantly they left the sculptures near the center and worked their way up another radius toward the perimeter, collecting as they went. It didn't matter where they came out, since all exits would take them to the same circumferential corridor and from there they could find their way back to the surface.
They chose what to take with them more carefully, now that they knew what the creators of this place looked like, but even so they had about as much stuff as they could carry, even in Rikard's 4D case.
Which was frustrating since the items on this side of the central chamber were somewhat different from those where they had entered. They saw a basket suspended between two wheels with a short T-bar extending from each side. There was a set of knives but with handles like stars set at ninety degrees to the blades at their centers. On one pedestal was a set of square plates a couple millimeters thick in four distinct shades of orange associated with very thin and springy hexagons of foil with a pattern on one side and progressive symbols on the other in three colors. On another low platform was a sphere on a pedestal with five round holes in the top, below and between each hole a small screen, and below each screen a short spout, and a plate at the top that could be depressed. And in one place they found a board inlaid with irregular shapes connected by branching and curving lines, on which were tiny figures in six colors, along with a rack with six wires and three beads on each wire, and four black cubes, all the same but with a different symbol on each face. Some of these figures were strange, but some represented the cyclopean builders of this place. Rikard took one of each type, and a pair of the dice, and put them in his jacket pocket instead of the case. He wanted these for himself until such time as a more formal investigation into the nature and history of this species had been initiated.
