The Unknown

by Angel Wedge

* * *

  In another meeting room, Commander Lemuel was feeling significantly outnumbered. Not by the Martians, but by the soldiers. He had three soldiers with him for this meeting, and there were no scientists in this particular ambassadorial mission. Brayden was the first ship’s head of security, while Berkoff and Stanleigh were representing ship two. It hadn’t been reassuring for Lemuel to find that their own crew had nicknamed those two ‘the warhawks’. On the other side of the table were Danver, Kells’s Head of Security and Peace, and Wallings, Head of Research and Technology. Neither seemed to be particularly friendly. He was doing his best to stop his people attempting to intimidate their opposite numbers, but it was very much a losing battle.

  “I wish we could listen to each other,” he said, “Because the more we know, the more we are finding that–”

  “We’re listening,” Brayden snapped, “But they’re not talking. They need to start telling us the truth. We don’t have a problem with weapons stockpiles, or experimentals. It’s a normal part of any large corporation. But we can’t trust someone who has the gall to sit on God knows what and claim they’ve got nothing at all! A little honesty, it’s all we need.”

  Before Danver could answer back, and it was pretty obvious that he was about to, his attention was distracted by a chirping from his tablet. He glanced down, and his teeth clenched hard. It was the only visible sign, but it was immediately obvious that his mood had gone downhill fast.

  “Wallings, you need to deal with this. Intruders in one of your facilities, showed up on the sensors.”

  “Can’t the security patrol pull them out?”

  “No. No patrols in the area. Your boys need to look into it.”

  “You don’t mean…” Wallings scrabbled at his own tablet, tapping a pattern of buttons so fast that it was obviously second nature. And then he held it up, the screen showing four figures in environment suits, walking slowly through a dark hallway.

  “Your people?” Danver glared at Major Stanleigh, with a hostility that was clearly meant for the whole group.

  “That looks like two of our people and two of yours,” Lemuel said, not allowing any emotion into his voice. “I do believe that those two are missing from their assigned duties, and I have to tell you I have no idea why they would be assisting Kells citizens in entering an area where I understand they are not supposed to be?”

  “Clearly they have taken prisoners!” Danver spluttered, “They are forcing honest Martians to lead them into–”

  “Ludicrous!” Major Brayden yelled, “You’re trying to implicate our people in a plot which is clearly not of their making. Look, that Martian guy is leading the way, I’m sure he’s not one of ours. If you’re trying to frame our scientists for some crime, that is a declaration of war, Sir. War!”

  “Please,” Wallings held up his hands for calm, “Yelling solves nothing. I am given to understand that although the Camp Wayland delegation would be shocked and probably horrified by my department’s secret, it would not be any cause for conflict. It is, after all, no threat to you. And I also see that if they continue along that corridor, they will see it for themselves. Someone with considerable computer skills appears to have interrupted my control over various active security systems, which means there is now nothing we can do to keep the secret, other than either eliminating these four, or bringing them into our confidence.”

  “You would–”

  “But!” Wallings would not be interrupted, and raised his voice by exactly the right amount; the skill of a lifelong teacher, “I cannot countenance violence against people whose only offence is curiosity, and if they have gone to such lengths to be here, I doubt they would be willing to help us keep this under wraps.”

  “I think we only have one choice,” Danver growled, “They’re forcing our hand. We will have to–”

  “It seems to me,” Lemuel spoke philosophically, as if he were speculating about some hypothetical situation. Somehow he had the presence to dominate the conversation without needing to shout, “that two members of the Kells populace are exercising their right to free exploration. As, I believe you have told us, your Social Contract stipulates they can. Are they damaging equipment, or putting themselves or others in danger?”

  “No,” Danver glared. “But consorting with–”

  “Quite right,” Wallings cut him off, “Commander, I’m sure you want to know what’s going on. My predecessor in this role made a very difficult decision nineteen years ago, and I have had to abide by the consequences of that, but it seems things are changing. And in the circumstances I don’t see any kind of platitudes that would satisfy your curiosity, So I will have to insist that you come with us. It’s up to you if your soldiers are included, or return home to report on the situation. But I think there’s a group of intruders who need to be made aware of the delicacy, and the seriousness, of the situation they have forced their way into.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure they can’t find us?” Jasper asked again, as Boo tapped away on her tablet, overriding the lock on the next door.

  “I didn’t say that,” she answered, “I said they can’t use the active security. They can’t seal the doors, or turn off the air. They can’t use servo droids to stop us, and if they want to send a patrol in, then they’ll have even more people to explain the truth to. That’s the problem with secrets, the more people you need to protect them, the more people there are who could let something slip. And in my experience, Security guys are even more serious about openness and honesty than the rest of the population.”

  “So, they can’t stop us getting in. But they might already know we’re here?”

  “Yes. The cameras are on a dedicated network, different frequency. I can’t get them from here. And… done!” The lock chirped. Now that its network access was offline, it could be overridden by a manual security code. And because the manual overrides were never used, nobody ever thought about them. Those codes hopefully hadn’t been changed since this place was built, and Bosẽ could find out what they were from his original copy of the blueprints. He keyed in the sequence, and they heard heavy bolts draw back.

  After all the corridors, they found themselves in a vast, round chamber with helical grooves and scaffolds all around the walls, stretching down into the darkness. Above, the chamber was much smaller. The ceiling was uneven, as if it had been dug out only as much as necessary to get the equipment in and then ignored. Near the top, there were a couple of irregular passages, but no obvious way to reach them from the gantry that connected to the doors.

  “The canyon’s up one of those,” Jasper pointed, “Bricked off. Don’t ask me why.”

  “Yeah,” Bosẽ nodded, “There were a half dozen thin fissures in the rock here. I think the chamber was supposed to enclose them all. From odd words I heard, I figured they were trying to dig out all of the places around those channels, but I could never guess why. One of them looked like it had been worn away by water pressure, erosion like in the Earth textbooks. We figured it had to be something else, though. They were powerful, worked for the Research Department, but not even old man Wallings has the influence to divert the amount of water that would need. And there’s no way for him to do it, either, it’s not like the tunnel followed anything like a straight path.”

  “And you never thought to mention this to me?” Boo glared in the half-light, “Friends, neighbours, but you never told me that some unknown person had co-opted hundreds of litres of water for some unapproved pressure carving?”

  “Hundreds? More like thousands. Maybe even millions. But no, I didn’t think of mentioning it. It doesn’t have wires or code, so I didn’t think you’d be interested. It’s just like, an odd detail from work. I didn’t know what they were doing, and I still don’t.”

  “What’s your best guess?” Elle piped up, wondering if anyone else had come to the same conclusion as her.

  “They tried drilling a shaft with water pressure. No idea why, trying new technology maybe. Some new con
struction technique. And then something got stuck in the shaft. Part of the technology maybe, or something they couldn’t afford to lose. Maybe someone invented a method for water drilling with much lower volumes needed, but he wouldn’t release his blueprints. Then they’d have to drill it out, try to recover the prototype to reconstruct the technology. But that’s so unlikely, it’s practically crazy, but it’s all I could come up with at the time. And there’d be no reason to keep it secret afterwards, so I just don’t know. I still think they were following those shafts, though. They wanted the cavern drilled down as far as possible, but just before geologic sonar shows the shafts converging, they ordered it to stop. It’s a dig site now, for the scientists to analyse every piece as it’s removed. That’s why I thought they wanted their experimental drill back.”

  “Well, they were sure looking for something,” Boo said. “We know they were excavating something down here, for some reason. But that’s all we know. And once they’ve found what they were after, why not build a residence tower down here? Or an algae vat? There’s no need to keep a huge chamber like this secret, if they could just use it for something the public would accept.”

  “Do these suits have radiation meters?” Jasper sounded like he was suddenly on the verge of panic.

  “Yes,” Elle answered, “And it’s normal. A little over background, but nothing to worry about. No air pollution either. Nothing to make this place uninhabitable, unless there’s a structural instability we can’t see. But–”

  “See the helix? See the scaffold?” Bosẽ pointed energetically, “I designed that. There will not be any kind of fault slippage or collapse here. No tectonic activity. I did my job well.”

  “The reason we can’t reuse the cavern,” a deep, resonant voice came from behind them, and all four spun around to face the door, “Is that we found something very important. Something that could have broken the morale of the first colonists if it had been more widely known. Something that still could, because its very existence demands action, and if we took that action, the remaining population would be smaller, and have a lower chance of long term survival.”

  “Wallings!” Boo called out, “What is this? You’ve been keeping something secret, so nobody else can study it? What are you going to do now we know?”

  As the lights in the vast chamber came up, they saw another man behind the department head. Commander Lemuel. And it was he who answered.

  “He’s going to show us what this secret is. And see if we reach the same conclusion, when we’re the ones on the hot seat. Because that’s the thing; they had to decide on their own all those years ago. They did what they thought was best, but they could never have a second opinion. Until now. Until our fleet brings in a lot more people, and resources intended for building a colony from scratch. Until the colony could actually survive a whole bunch of people leaving after they see this… whatever it is.”

  “So let’s see it, then.” Jasper was the most impatient, but it was a close thing. They all wanted to know what could be so important. Lemuel and Wallings hurried to catch up, and then the whole group carried on moving down the long spiral of metal stairs. The room was well lit now, but there was dust in the air, and they couldn’t see how far the room went down. They didn’t see what was hidden here until they were practically on top of it.

  It was made of stone, and it was more than a hundred metres wide. It almost took up the whole chamber.

  “You can’t take it apart to move it?” Boo suggested, “That’s why you excavated it and then built this hall around it, like some kind of temple?”

  “Yes. The outer rings appear to be single pieces. Granite. This would have taken months to put together.”

  “How?” Jasper asked, not taking his eyes off the orrery. Stone models of planets, moving around on giant stone rings, driven by an amazingly complex set of gears half hidden in the chamber’s floor so far below. “Carving and polishing granite like that, it’s not my field, but I’d think that would take years, even decades.”

  “We’ve got the Caraston process,” Bosẽ explained, “Can do things like that much quicker. But even so, stone gears? Clockwork? Months is right, even assuming shifts round the clock. Did you say this was buried down here? So someone climbed down one of those little shafts every day to work on it? How did they swing that? Schedules have been so tight until recently, there’s no way somebody could take that much time off their department duties.”

  “It’s older than that,” Wallings answered, but the answer only raised more questions, “Caraston’s team developed their methods by studying this sculpture. We don’t know who invented it before us. They left some items here, and we’ve spent years trying to work out a story when we’ve only got a couple of pieces.”

  “So it’s the Travellers then?” Elle hoped she was saying something sensible this time, “Boo said some crazy people left Mars again, took a load of resources with them, and nobody knows why. They were the ones who left this here, maybe…” she paused a second, and raised her hand to touch a delicate metal chain that connected some of the stone planets together. “They left it as a map, so those who remained could follow them.”

  “A bit ostentatious for that,” Jasper snorted.

  “No, we believe the young lady is mostly right,” Wallings answered. “Or rather, those who travelled on were the first to learn that this map existed. Wallace called it the ‘treasure map’. Their departure almost crippled our nascent civilisation, leaving us with a population barely large enough to be viable. So of course we felt we had to ensure that would not happen again. We let a few, trusted people research it. And they found evidence to suggest… things we could not countenance the belief in. Until we dug it out, and were able to properly confirm every detail.”

  “Wait, the Travellers followed this map?” Boo was incredulous, “Even if someone had the carving techniques or whatever, there wasn’t time between the first landing and…”

  “How long have we had rockets capable of spaceflight?” Lemuel was the first to follow where Wallings was leading them. “It’s three months since we arrived on this planet, and there’s no way this could possibly be carved in less than three months. But it’s only politics and economics that stopped the fleet coming to Mars years earlier, and as soon as we saw the evidence we were ready to accept that Wallace had done what he promised all those years ago. He shouldn’t have been the laughing stock Earth remembers him as. The only possibility is that we weren’t the first people to make a mission to Mars.”

  “And neither were we,” Wallings nodded. “Looking at the few items we have to study, it seems likely that an earlier expedition was here years before us. Maybe even leaving Earth in the twentieth century. Geniuses, who invented technologies they didn’t share with their brethren on Earth. The ones who were disgusted by the tribalism and competition in the early space race. Just like many of us. Their technology was antiquated when we found it, but with some strokes of genius that we had no record of on Earth. It is by combining their technology with our own that our Martian civilisation has become so advanced. And by sharing with the expedition from Earth, we can give you the inventions we have that you don’t, and vice versa, to make our civilisation even stronger.”

  “The thing you’re not saying,” Elle didn’t want to be the one to crush everybody’s excitement, but she felt it had to be addressed. “You think that sooner or later, another group will set out to travel on. To follow these chains. Earth to its moon, the Moon to Mars, Mars to… Ganymede?”

  “Europa,” Jasper corrected, peering at the stones, “I think. I always confuse the names.”

  “You are correct,” Wallings nodded, “And yes, I think people will want to trace the footsteps of their interplanetary ancestors. I know it. Because we are two cultures both self-selected for curiosity, for the desire to explore. When this becomes public knowledge, some fraction of our population will find their imaginations on fire, and they will refuse to work on anything other than travelling to Eur
opa. There, they might finally find Wallace’s tomb. Or they may find another waystation, another map. Who knows? But they will go, which is why we have kept this secret so long. Until a mass departure wouldn’t leave our cities too empty to survive.”

  “Altruistic,” Boo nodded, “I don’t buy it though. I think that if people knew, they would strive even harder to make our city, our people, more resilient. To do everything they can to bring us to a point where we are ready to let more explorers follow the first.”

  “That’s your opinion. I wondered if that might be the case, all those years ago, but we decided it wasn’t worth the risk. That was our decision. If you want to judge us for our mistakes, then first your generation needs to make your decision, knowing that you are gambling the fate of your society, your people. You won’t think it’s so easy, once it sinks in that whatever happens is your responsibility.”

  “Wait, you’re not going to threaten us? You’re not going to impose sanctions to make sure we keep secret?”

  “No. I’m going to pass on the torch, and hope that your decision is the right one. Whether my generation was right or not.”

  Then there was a heavy silence, weighed down with duty and responsibility. Lemuel wondered what Brayden would have made of this. He was probably racing back to Camp Wayland now, trying to raise an army to rescue his Commander. It would be a tricky situation to resolve, but better than having his conflict-first attitude in such a tense situation.

  Elle broke the silence in the end.

  “This plaque here… it says they were going to find what was waiting for them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this past group, whoever they were. They thought that this was some treasure worth building a Mars base and then abandoning it again to spend decades in space?”

  “We believe so.”

  “And the Travellers, they thought it was worth it too.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “That, I’m afraid, is the treasure that has proved both more attractive and more terrifying to humanity than anything else over the past centuries.”