by Paul Lucas
“Flier told you to behave,” I snapped. Then, after a few moments' pause, I added, “On the day of my Mating, you shot my husband with an arrow, threatened to kill him, and did everything you could to discredit and shame us. You have not exactly been a friend to us these past few years. But this is not the time and place to discuss this.”
He shrugged. “These machines have been here for untold years, and they are not going anywhere. Besides, perhaps I do not share the fascination the humans have for technological things.” He said the last word like a curse.
We entered a chamber that must have been as large as every occupied apartment in our community combined. It was so large it took nearly a heartbeat for our echoes to rejoin us. It was lined with large blocks of what looked like metallic UTSite. “Hmm. Could be an element node,” I said. The Builders had been known to store raw materials in such containers. Sometimes they were easily accessible, sometimes not. I had read somewhere that the element nodes in the Underworld sometimes contained materials considered too toxic to allow into the upper habitat even by accident, such as uranium, raw chlorine or even plutonium. Best to leave them alone. I toggled the small trackball on my notepad and started toward the next chamber opening.
“To get back to what we were talking about,” I said to my companion. “You are a hypocrite, Cloud. You rail against the humans and what they bring into the community, but even now you carry a human-made rifle instead of your usual bow and quiver of arrows.”
“After the Xique attack, I thought it prudent to carry better weapons.”
“But that is just it. What have they given us that was not better than what we had before? I have noticed you enjoying a glider flight at least once a week, despite what happened to Sunwing. Gliders that Lerner showed us how to make. And his former people are so generous with what they have! Because of them, we have better medicines, better tools, better farming techniques...”
“Better husbands?”
I stopped walking and turned on him. I must have been sporting one of the glares Flier had mentioned, because Cloud withdrew from me a half-step upon seeing my anger. “Is this what this is all about, Cloud? You still resent my Mating with Lerner instead of you?”
“Gossamyr, he is not one of us.”
My snapped my wing membranes in irritation. “Answer my question!” My voice was louder than I intended.
Cloud sighed. “Very well. I will not lie. Yes. Yes, I resent it still. I always have. Even after I was with Sunwing. Everyone agrees that you would have been my Mate if the humans had not come.”
“Everyone but me. Cloud, I remember those days as clearly as you. I remember everyone saying that, too, that we would probably end up Mating. It may have even come to pass. And you want to know why? Not because I loved you, or really felt anything toward you except maybe a distant friendship. It was because you were the least objectionable bachelor male available. I was always an outsider, always odd little Gossamyr who was always thinking strange thoughts instead of going along with everyone else. It was even worse after my parents died. I would have ended up with you not because I wanted to but because there would have been no one else I could have even remotely have gotten along with. Would you have really wanted me that way, Cloud? To me, you would have simply been a Mate of last resort. I thank the spirits every day for sending Lerner to me instead.”
I knew my words were going to hurt him, but perhaps that last statement had been a bit too much. He looked like an arrow had just pierced his chest. But after a moment he straightened, adjusted his rifle’s shoulder strap and began walking ahead. “I see. Fine. Let us get on with this, then.”
I instantly regretted my anger. I did not know he still hurt so deeply for what happened, not after three years and a Mate of his own with her wings already in the Hall of Remembrance. I ran to catch up to him, laying a hand on his arm. “Cloud, please.”
He angrily shrugged me off. “No, Gossamyr, it is all right. I overheard you and Windrider talking. You go have your blasphemous children with your alien Mate in his homeland. Your people will get along fine without you. You are really more human now than Myotan, anyway.”
My anger suddenly returned. “What is that supposed to mean!”
“Look at you!” He flung his tool-fingers at me, indicating my body. “You are wearing human jeans instead of Dhaki skin leggings! You are actually wearing a shirt, a human tee-shirt, tied together through loops you pierced in your wing membranes! Your sacred wings mutilated for human cloth! What other Myotan in the community has done such a thing? And look at how you handle that electronic box, like you have been doing it your entire life! You speak the human language so much that you actually have some of a human accent nowadays! Even your wing tattoos are of a human totem, of these strange “sunsets” that took place on their mythical old Earth! Your body may look Myotan, but everything else about you has become human! And you are going to be our next Shaman? Human whore is more like it!”
I growled, my fist lashing out and backhanding him. He did not even try to dodge or block it. The blow staggered him back a step. “How dare you!” I shouted. “I love my husband! Windrider herself gave us her blessing from the start! If it was not for the humans and their weapons, we would all have been meat for the Xique! You are lucky I do not summon a lightning spirit and show you just what kind of ‘whore’ I’ve become! I--”
My tirade dwindled away when I noticed the tears flowing from his eyes, matting his facial fur. Had my blow hurt him more than I had thought? “Cloud?”
“And you want to know the stupidest thing, Gossamyr? The most incredibly dumb thing about all of this?” He wiped his eyes on his wing membrane like a little boy, the trembling in his voice barely contained. “I would still become your Mate in an instant, if I could.”
I was stunned into silence.
“G-go join the others, Cloud,” I finally managed. “Just tell them we got separated. I’ll come back in a little bit.”
“Gossamyr?” he said, a bit hopefully.
I shook my head. “Cloud, I am so sorry I have hurt you like that. I guess I never really knew how you truly felt. But you have to understand. Lerner is my Mate. He always will be, in this life and the next.”
He opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to think of something to say, his face careening through a dozen emotions in as many heartbeats. But in the end, all he did was give me a shallow nod--which could have meant anything--and turned to go. I watched the light from his flashlight slowly recede down the tunnels.
I found myself wiping away a stray tear. Would Mating with him have really been as awful as I always said? Perhaps it would have just taken him longer to grow up than most.
I wished that, just once before I died, that I could meet a single male--of any species--that did not utterly confuse me.
I continued with my exploring, but the thrill of it was gone. I went through the motions of mapping, but I reacted not at all in the way I thought I would when confronted with the impossible machines of the Builders.
I knew Cloud had always been resentful of Lerner for winning me over. I just did not realize his feelings had run so deep, or that he had held on to them after all these years. No one in the community had worked harder to sabotage Lerner and I, but spirits help me, when I saw him crying just now all I wanted to do was hug him. We had been such good friends once, before we grew up...
Which, of course, would have been the most insane thing to do, leading him on in any way. Lerner was my Mate. I never regretted that, not even with all the awkwardness of our differing bodies and when the entire community seemed arrayed against us. He was everything I ever wanted in a husband.
Except being able to give me children, as Cloud could have.
Where was my mind going? I shook my head to get that image out of my head.
Which was when I tripped over the mummified corpse.
THIRTY-FOUR
Thousands of civilizations have risen and fallen on the MegaShard since the Grea
t Cataclysm five millennia ago. This should come as no surprise, given the Shard’s sheer size and its estimated trillions of sentient inhabitants. In the KN’s Zone of Exploration alone, which barely makes up 3% of the total surface area of the MegaShard, ruins of 138 non-Builder civilizations have so far been discovered. Most of these never achieved a level of advancement beyond the early Bronze Age. In the same area, 34 living city-states as well as 19 coherent nations have been contacted since the current Age of Exploration began 30 years ago. Again, most of these are at low advancement levels and seem likely to fall into the traps of resource mismanagement and calcifying conservatism, not to mention falling prey to outside forces such as natural catastrophes and belligerent neighbors, that doomed so many of their predecessors. Only the Known Nations, the Boiler Lords, Darlan, and the River Kingdoms have so far been able to escape this trap that most Shard-bound societies fall prey to, and two of those have had to adopt a calcifying form of extreme conservatism to ensure long-range viability.
The civilizations that first arose on old Earth also experienced these difficulties, but they emerged within such close proximity to each other, especially on the Eurasian continent, that total collapse was often arrested. As one society fell, others close by were often rising, providing a “safety net” of preserved knowledge by halo effect.
On the MegaShard, however, civilizations can arise tens of thousands of kilometers away from their nearest neighbors. If they stumble, there is no one around to catch them. Even on Earth, some cultures were so completely isolated that their collapses were near-total in their slide back to the stone-age; witness the Maya and the natives of Easter Island, among others.
On maps, living civilizations are often denoted by name but sites of dead ones are usually denoted by the initials NBR (Non-Builder Ruin) and a number indicating the order in which they were discovered. The OEC offers a discovery bonus of ten to twenty-five thousand credits for living civilizations, but has withdrawn the bonus for finding NBR sites because of their plentitude.
--from A Guide to the Outlands, 546 Under Every Rock edition, Haggerty Press, Borelea
* * *
I did what any sane, rational person would do when all alone in a strange, dark place and suddenly confronted with a leering visage of death.
I screamed.
I stopped when it finally percolated into my hindbrain that the body was not moving or going to hurt me in any way. Several weeks earlier, I had helped Windrider prepare twenty-three fresh corpses for their final journey. While that experience deeply disturbed and saddened me, it did not evoke even a fraction of the dread that the dried, grinning skull did. Recent death was something I could handle. Ancient death was a terror new to me.
The figure was humanoid, naked to the waist, where some tattered remnants of cloth still hung. Its skin was leathery and pulled taught into a thousand painful-looking creases. Its eye sockets were large, dark and hollow. I suppressed a shudder.
It was not human like I had first suspected. The Builders had been human, so I guess that is what I expected the mummified corpse to be. But as I looked more closely, I saw that the skull was too elongated, and the bones were too slight. Most tellingly, the third and fourth finger on each hand extended over a meter.
A Myotan.
I gingerly poked at the remains with my flashlight.
“Gossamyr?”
I yelped and involuntarily flung the flashlight into the air. I turned just in time to see Cloud catch it with his free hand. “I heard you scream.”
I gestured toward the mummified corpse. He swung his own light over it even as he handed mine back to me. “Sky-Spirit,” he breathed.
“It’s Myotan,” I said.
“How old is it?”
“I don’t know.” It was odd, how quickly our earlier confrontation was forgotten in the wake of this discovery. The fantastic machines that awaited us in the surrounding chambers somehow seemed a bit too abstract to have much immediate impact upon us. But this, this was something we could immediately identify with; one of our own, dead. “But it looks like he has been down here a very long time. Decades, or maybe even centuries.”
“I should go get the others,” he said.
“I am pretty sure they heard my scream. They will be here soon enough.”
“Do not be so sure. We are quite a ways away from them, and we had to turn several corners. Plus, the echoes act strangely, here. I barely heard you and I only left you a few minutes ago.”
“We will go get them, then. Just let me make sure we can find this spot easily, again.” I closed my eyes and summoned a light spell. Or a sun spirit, as Windrider would call it. The nanites in the surrounding area would give off their stored energy as low-level light for about an hour or so. By their many billions, it would be just bright enough for a human to read by. And unlike summoning a fire or lightning spirit, the nanites would not destroy themselves in the process.
My mind cleared and I began the ordering of my thoughts necessary to reach out to the Matrix. But suddenly I felt something mentally reaching toward me, instead. A presence, a mild kind of pressure in my mind, probing.
I stopped the spell and the presence faded away. I tottered slightly.
“Are you all right?”
“I--I do not--” I looked around, suddenly alarmed. “There is something here with us.”
Cloud pulled the rifle from his shoulder. “Where?”
I shook my head. “That is not going to do any good. It is in the Nanotech Matrix, I think.” I had to remember that Cloud knew very little of nanites. “The presence, I mean. Connected to this place, somehow.”
“A spirit?” He glanced meaningfully at the mummified corpse behind me.
“Something like that,” I said. “I am going to try to contact it further.”
“Is that wise?”
“Probably not.” I slitted my eyes. Once again I cleared my mind for a spell, but which one I was not quite sure yet. It did not matter, because the presence returned as soon as I began ordering my thoughts. I felt a growing compulsion the longer I stayed in contact with it, a compulsion to reach out and touch the wall behind the corpse.
But not touch it just anywhere. A small square, about chest height, began glowing a dull red.
“Spirits!” I swore. “What is that?”
Cloud looked at me, perplexed. “What? Where?”
I peered more closely at the square on the wall. I saw that the light did not actually come from the wall, but from a perfectly two-dimensional plane hovering a finger-width above it.
My husband had mentioned something similar once, found only rarely at other artifact sites: a Matrix-accessed control. The physical instrumentality found on most Builder artifacts are thought to be merely back-ups. The Builders probably controlled most of their devices directly through the Matrix, their minds linked by it to all their machines.
This--whatever it was--must have been left on automatic, responding to whoever was within range who could access the Matrix. Conversely, it was planting an image in my mind through the nanites already in my brain. I placed the tips of my tool-fingers on the wall in the center of the glowing square. They tingled briefly.
A message flashed through my mind. DNA variations within accepted parameters. Code verified. Access granted.
A laser-straight seam appeared in the wall before us, followed by a pop and a low hiss. The seam pulled apart to reveal a narrow doorway and a chamber beyond. The mummy slumped into the opening.
I gingerly stepped over it and into the new chamber. Cloud hissed at me to wait, but I ignored him. The room had opened for me, specifically. Or at least someone with the right DNA. What did I have to fear from it? If it had been a trap it would have opened for anyone indiscriminately.
Inside, another crystal room like the one we had found earlier, but here the crystals were white and irregularly shaped. Did the builders just really like pretty rocks, or was there something more to it?
Dumas mentioned that the crystal
in the other room might have been holographic crystals, used as a kind of memory storage device for computers. Is that what these were?
I walked over to one and picked it up, looking through the translucent material. The interior seemed more than a little odd, like it was reflecting the light from my flashlight in impossible ways. Looking into it for more than a couple seconds made my head hurt.
Only one crystal stood out, a perfectly-round globe a few centimeters across, resting on a raised box on its place in the shelves. Inside it was another sphere, one that looked strangely out of place within the larger one. Its colors constantly shifted and it seemed to undulate and fade out when I looked at it too closely. I felt another headache coming on the more I peered at it, so I put it down and examined the box underneath.
The box was made of a strange kind of plastic. Its surface throbbed and flowed in my hand, an indication of active Q-tronic circuitry within. But most odd was the many tiny symbols painstakingly carved into its molding. I peered closely at them, and realized they looked surprisingly similar to Myotan script. Not exactly the same, but many symbols seemed to have close facsimiles in our own alphabet. The only letters that were more than a few millimeters high were also the only ones I could more-or-less translate, assuming the two alphabets were indeed related.
The message was simple.
Death of the World.
THIRTY-FIVE
I looked down at my hands, disappointed. Why weren’t they on fire?
“It isn’t working,” I said.
“You’re not doing it right,” Louis said. “You have to visualize a circle-arc of about sixty degrees after you get done with the photon interactions. Here, I usually move my finger in a curve like this during that part to remind me.” He demonstrated.
He, Windrider, Amethyst and myself were in the woods several kilometers from the Tower, having a spell-swapping session. Amethyst came along nominally to provide us with some security, but in truth was probably just happy for the chance to see Louis do what he did best. She spent as much time covertly watching him than watching out for any potential threat.
