Asimov's SF, April-May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  This seems a little weird to be a museum, Roye said.

  Let's not jump to conclusions, she said. We're just getting started.

  Then she shivered again. They were just getting started. They had planned their route the night before: This series of large caverns, then two passageways down, another bigger cave. If they didn't find anything there, they'd use scanning equipment to see if they could find the water's source. And if they didn't find that, then they would work their way back.

  She was ready to go back now. She was so tense that she had been grinding her teeth—at least, she thought she had. They ached, even though her jaw didn't.

  You finding anything? she asked Roye.

  A whole lotta nothing, he said.

  Me too. But she dutifully felt and walked and recorded, going over the giant cavern bit by furry bit.

  * * * *

  19

  The divers disappeared under the water. Gabrielle watched for several minutes, until the bubbles faded and she couldn't see shadows moving under the surface.

  The cold had numbed her hands—she hadn't worn gloves or added protection because she knew she wouldn't be down here long. Besides, she liked to carry the chill to the surface and let the sun burn it off her. She was about to leave when something rustled behind her. She turned.

  Meklos was kneeling in front of the divers’ packs. He had opened one and was taking the pieces out.

  “I thought you'd already inspected those,” she said.

  “I did,” he said. “I wanted to see if they'd added anything.”

  “You still don't trust them,” she said.

  “You pay me not to trust anyone.”

  She shook her head. She was glad he would be gone soon. Who knew that security guards could be so thorough? She watched him take items out—things she couldn't quite identify. And then he stopped as he removed an extra suit.

  “You got someone who can use this?” he asked.

  She shook her head. She had no idea. He had asked something similar before, and she hadn't known the answer then, either. She wasn't sure why he cared.

  “So they have a back-up,” she said. “So what?”

  “Back-up,” he muttered. “Hmmm.”

  He set the suit aside and continued his search.

  “If you don't need me any longer,” she said, “I'm heading to the surface where it's warm.”

  Without waiting for his answer, she walked around him to the stairs. She glanced at Yusef. He was bundled in three extra layers of clothing beneath his heavy coat.

  “You'll be all right?” she asked.

  He held up a reading pad and pointed to his lunch. “I'm here for the long haul.”

  She smiled at him. Then she took one last look at the water. It seemed completely undisturbed now, as if there weren't two humans beneath it.

  A chill ran down her spine. She certainly wouldn't go down there. But then, she wasn't being paid to.

  * * * *

  20

  Meklos had cleared out the packs, finding nothing he hadn't seen before. He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for—a small piece of equipment, a tiny receiver, something. But he hadn't found anything except the third suit.

  Was it simply a required precaution? Or was a third diver hiding somewhere?

  He didn't know enough about professional cave diving to be aware of what the required precautions were. Regular water diving didn't last as long as a cave dive; the suits weren't as sophisticated and weren't meant to last for days should something go wrong.

  He picked up the suit and poked it with his finger. It stretched, then embraced his finger, becoming a part of it. He had a hunch puncturing this thing would take a great deal of work. It might be impossible. So it wasn't as fragile as it initially seemed.

  If the suit had belonged to Dr. Reese, he would have punctured it and dealt with the consequences. But he didn't want to risk insulting the experts. Besides, they might need that third suit for a reason he hadn't yet thought of. He didn't dare do anything to it, at least until the dive was over.

  But he did turn it inside out. Controls were scattered throughout—some on the fingertips, some on the back of the hand. Others ran along the chin. The eye area was clear, but probably had some kind of communications screen. He pressed one of the control chips along the chin and the eye area lit up. He pressed another and got a temperature readout that ran along the side of the right eye.

  Then he pressed a third and the Spires appeared before the left eye, looking just like they did on the floor of the temple. Only on this image the Spires were clear, except for the outlines of the branches and a red dot at the edge of one of the wide areas.

  His heart started to pound. He picked up the suit and carried it to the steps. The red dot moved with him. He cursed.

  “Everything okay?” Yusef asked.

  Meklos almost cursed again. He had forgotten Yusef was here. “Yeah,” he said. “I accidentally turned something on. I need to figure out how to shut it off.”

  “Let me.” Yusef had to struggle to stand with all of his layers of clothing.

  Meklos pressed the controls again. The Spires disappeared.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I got it.”

  “Never seen a suit like that before, huh?” Yusef asked.

  “Not like this,” Meklos said. “Have you?”

  “I try not to do anything that requires I carry my environment with me,” Yusef said. “This is as close to an environmental suit as I get.” He indicated his coat and boots.

  Meklos smiled because he was supposed to. Then he shut off the other parts of the suit, turned it rightside to, and put it back inside the pack. He turned to Yusef. “You sure you don't want one of my team down here too?”

  Yusef shrugged. “I'm okay by myself.”

  “You've established emergency procedures?”

  “I have some field medicine training, if needed. Besides, I'm pretty sure they'll be fine. If the caverns below are anything like the caverns up here, there aren't even sharp edges for them to get caught on.”

  He was as cavalier as his employer. Maybe that was why Yusef and Dr. Reese got along so well.

  “I'll be back down before they're due to come up,” Meklos said.

  “Okay.” Yusef sounded like he didn't care. He pressed himself against the wall, getting white residue on the back of his coat. He sank to the floor facing the water, but pulled out his work pad. Meklos shook his head. Maybe he'd send someone down. After he had some time to think. Because he felt mildly stupid already. How could he have missed it? The Spires weren't some artistic design. They were a map. A three-dimensional map of the cave system below the city. But why would there be a map of the caves so visible from the mountaintop?

  “You guys ever figure out what the Spires were for?” Meklos asked.

  Yusef gave him an annoyed look. Clearly the man wanted to be left alone. “They were never my specialty. I came here for the city.”

  “But has anyone figured out what they're for? I mean, they're pretty dramatic.”

  “The whole place is dramatic,” Yusef said.

  Meklos stared at him. Yusef seemed to realize that he wasn't going to leave until the question got answered.

  “And no, no one knows for certain what they are. All that inlay, all that writing, the way they vibrate if you hit them too hard says artwork to me. But I'll leave it to people who are interested. I'd much rather look at a building than some sculpture that people attached to a mountaintop.”

  He sounded convincing. He sounded irritated.

  Meklos nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “I was just wondering.”

  “Yep,” Yusef said. “Everyone wonders about this place. Maybe someday we'll have answers.”

  “Maybe,” Meklos said as he mounted the stairs for the surface. And maybe, he thought, some people already had this place all figured out.

  * * * *

  21

  Nothing in the widest part of the caverns. Navi had steeled he
rself to come across some statue, a face looming in the murk, maybe, or an arm reaching out to her. But nothing like that happened. She walked through meters and meters of thick water, the white sediment thick and flowing around her as if she were in the middle of a blizzard.

  Creepiest dive I've done in a long time, Roye said.

  Me, too.

  She had been hoping for artifacts. Maybe they'd gotten moved as the caverns flooded. Maybe she would step into one of the smaller areas and find everything crammed against the walls, moved by the force of the water.

  You don't think this white stuff is from dissolved artifacts, do you? she asked.

  No, he said. Haven't you noticed? The walls flake.

  I thought that was algae.

  It is—or something like it—in the niches. But the walls themselves. Touch one. You'll see.

  She was close to an outcropping. She touched its rounded surface gently. As her fingers found the surface, a flurry of white chips entered the water and flowed with it.

  There is some kind of current down here, isn't there? she asked.

  I'm not sure, he said. We could be doing this. I'm not getting readings that suggest any movement other than our disturbing the environment.

  She wasn't either. She just wanted to find something.

  She entered the next cavern. It seemed darker than the one before, even though she knew that wasn't possible. No light filtered down here except the lights she and Roye had brought with them. At least the water hadn't gotten any thicker. She glanced at the map. One more large room to go after this one. Then the passageways.

  Then she could get out.

  This would be her last cave dive. If she ever had to go through a ruse like this again, she would stay on the surface and supervise. They would bring a new cave diver in. She was getting too old and too impatient for this kind of thing. Or maybe the impatience was coming from the lack of treasure. She loved treasure just like everyone else. The only difference was that all she had to do was touch it. Then it was hers forever.

  * * * *

  22

  Meklos hadn't realized how cold he had become in that cavern. His hands ached. His nose throbbed. The moment the sunlight hit him, the blood rose in his skin, attempting to warm him. How cold had it been down there? Colder than it should have been, even in an underground chamber. He wondered what caused that.

  Those caverns were important in a way he couldn't understand. And if Yusef's comments were to be believed, Dr. Reese and her team didn't understand, either. They didn't even realize that the Spires were a map.

  Meklos moved away from the building that housed the entrance to the caverns. He stepped into an open area and looked up. He had been right. The image he had seen in that suit was the Spires, with a dot indicating where he was. A map.

  And his little cave divers, the experts who supposedly knew nothing about this dig, had known about that.

  What else did they know?

  He really should go to Dr. Reese and tell her that her experts knew more about this place than she did, but he wasn't going to—at least not yet.

  The walk across the city of Denon took longer than he'd expected it to. He didn't walk along the main roads, but stayed to the backs of buildings.

  Not everything was excavated. He had to go around mounds of reddish brown dirt, some of which had reattached itself to nearby white buildings. Only the larger buildings had been completely uncovered. The smaller ones were still half buried. He hadn't realized that before. He'd never done a thorough walk-through of the city. He'd been too busy setting up defensive parameters and trying to find out exactly what Dr. Reese wanted, and then worrying about these so-called experts. He hadn't had time to do some of the most important work at this job. But he had had a chance to examine the building where they housed the cave divers. He hadn't come at it from this angle before—he'd come at it from the front, off the main road, which was where it was situated.

  Coming from the back and side, he realized that half the buildings behind it weren't fully excavated. Their basic shape had been dug out, and many had been excavated down to the foundation on one side only—usually the side that faced the main street.

  Someone could have—and probably had—gone inside, looked around, and then gone back out. But dirt remained on the walls, and seemed to fill the back areas.

  Oddly enough, however, the roofs on all of the buildings had been cleaned off. They were that same pristine white as the excavated parts of the city. He didn't think about the reasons for that—although he did know the effect. It maximized the light and the reflections.

  This place was already overly bright. Clearing the roofs of all the buildings made it even brighter. He ducked inside the building that had housed the cave divers and had to blink at the darkness. Even now, his eyes had trouble adjusting to the shift in light levels. He had to pause and wait for his eyes to adjust, which annoyed him. If someone wanted to attack him here, all they had to do was wait until he came in from the outside. Fortunately, no one lurked inside. The main room barely looked used, and the air mattresses in the back were pressed against the wall, like beds on a ship, their covers folded and pristine.

  The cave divers hadn't left many of their belongings. The clothes they'd worn the day before were hanging off one of two chairs that Dr. Reese had provided. A few personal items were scattered on the only table.

  A secondary pack, one that had initially been tucked into the other packs, waited near the foot of one of the beds, but had nothing inside.

  The emptiness bothered him. The way the couple had described the cave dives had given him the impression that they would be here for several days, taking each dive slowly, especially if they had to look for the water's source. But the building didn't look like someone planned to camp here for several days. It looked like one night's use was all it was going to get.

  Maybe these two were former military, and never left things in a mess. Or maybe they hadn't brought a lot because they weren't sure what they would find. But the lack of personal items—here and in the cavern—bothered him.

  He carried minimal amounts of equipment when he was doing what he called a “quick and dirty,” a job that would requires him to go in and come out within twenty-four Earth hours. This looked like a quick and dirty to him, right down to the items left in the building.

  If the experts had to leave quickly, they could abandon the things they had here with no consequences at all. A few items of clothing, some cheap jewelry, nothing that couldn't be easily replaced. Nothing that would be missed.

  He shivered now, even though he had gotten warm. What were they planning? Why were they here? And, most important of all, what did Dr. Reese know, and why hadn't she told him?

  * * * *

  23

  Navi let Roye go into the passageway first. She dreaded it, which surprised her. He had mentioned getting caught or trapped inside the passages before they dove, and now the idea was stuck in her head. Everything seemed stuck in her head. Her teeth ached, and the ache was traveling up her cheekbones into her forehead. She would have a blinding headache before this was through if she didn't stop grinding her teeth together.

  Roye's lights reflected off the white walls, coming back toward her like a halo. She dove into that instead of the darkness, swimming for the first time since they'd gone underwater. At least the white sediment had thinned. Now it looked like they were going through actual water, not some kind of snowstorm.

  Roye moved slowly ahead of her, his feet kicking just enough to propel him forward. She followed far enough behind that his moving feet wouldn't hit her. She hadn't asked him if this place made him uneasy. She didn't want to admit it to herself. So far they had found nothing. She was beginning to wonder if they would find anything at all.

  * * * *

  24

  Gabrielle wiped the last of the dirt off a tiny vase. The vase was fragile, the glass so thin that a press of her fingers would crack it. Amazing it had survived this long underground
. Amazing that digging it up hadn't harmed it in any way.

  Amazing that she even held it at all.

  She was in the cleaning station at the back of the temple. So far, she was the only one to use this building. Even then, she hadn't brought the most precious items in here, like the statue she had found in the caverns. She didn't want to get into the habit. She knew she would have to allow the others in soon, but she didn't want to. She didn't want the interns and the post-docs and the eager young graduate students to see all of her treasures.

  Of course, they wouldn't see all of her treasures. Some she would move to her own building, without ever having crossed the threshold here. But even the small vases, insignificant except that they had come from the City of Denon and were a great example of Denonite workmanship, felt like hers.

  She could sell this little thing for a small fortune, enough to retire on, and no one would ever know. She could sell the two dozen tiny vases already recovered, replenishing her finances as the years went by, and she would never get caught. Collectors never told. They just enjoyed.

  The problem was that she didn't want to retire. She loved the work in the field as much as she loved the treasures.

  And she loved having her name attached to a major discovery—a discovery that would forever change not just the field of archeology, but the fields of history and art history. A discovery that might even help the humans in this sector recover the knowledge they had lost.

  She held the vase up to the light flowing in from the door. The glass was so fine she could see through it. It was so milky white, so dainty, that she had a hunch it was made from the white dirt that covered the top of the mountain.

  As she stared through the vase, a shadow appeared. Someone had come inside.

  She sighed and set the vase down.

  Of course, the person violating her privacy was the stupid head of security, Meklos Verr. Eventually, he would leave her alone. Eventually, he would leave.

  “Your experts have made a fascinating discovery,” he said.

  Her heart leaped. She had been hoping for this, but she hadn't wanted it to come through him. She wanted it to come from Yusef down in the cavern. She carefully set the vase down—she didn't want to break it in her excitement—and stepped off the newly constructed floor. The tips of her shoes touched the edge of the drawing on the temple floor.