by Jack Dann
“Curious and stubborn, like all who come calling. Why should I tell? Perhaps the people of my day did preserve the body as well. Or the head. Who knows? We may have had cryonics long before we could code personality. The others you spoke to said what?”
“Dormeuse, I’m new to this. A lot of the veterans in town won’t talk to me. They only sell what they know. I can’t afford them.”
“But, little one, you’re in this far. I know you won’t believe me but you’re past the Stones. You’re very well prepared tech-wise, my systems show. You’ve accessed a third-level intercept response from me. I frankly didn’t expect that. You have to have the advice of others.”
Beni felt his heart pounding. Could it be true? In this far! Free of the Stones. Could it?
“Ramirez,” he said, deciding she’d probably guessed it already. “One day he stopped on the way past my family’s farm. I was in the orchard. I reminded him of a son he’d lost, he said. He told me things about the tombs. About your tomb. He was giving it up at last, he said, going away. But he told me of you, Dormeuse. Of all the tombs yours was the one, he said. He was an eidetic, as you probably guessed. Perfect recall. Helped him with variants in the tomb plans when there were some, but more with the characteristics of the intercepts, their features and mode changes. He drew your likeness for me. Your image’s likeness.”
“Why, Beni. Don’t tell me you’re infatuated? In love?”
“It’s not that! It’s complex. I was without a father. He was without a son. We just talked.”
“Oh stop! Stop! Don’t tell me. And I became mother and wife! I love it. Midwife to hunters.”
Beni clenched his jaws in anger. They walked in silence awhile down the ceramic corridor, him concentrating on his plan readings, glancing up at the passage ahead, glancing back down, up, down, she flowing beside him, a spindle of light with eyes like onyx.
“You said it was complex,” she said after a time, coaxing, sounding just contrite enough. Perhaps he had accessed a new mode from her.
“Then I don’t know why I’m here. All my life it was what the best of us did. The tombs were something you couldn’t ignore, how’s that? I’ve walked past yours probably a thousand times. More than a thousand over the years. Yesterday I finally decided to try. Today I came out here again.”
“Your point, little hunter?”
“Our own culture formed around the leavings of yours, Dormeuse, but yours keeps intruding. Your language has virtually replaced ours. Do you know how insufferable something like that is? Can you imagine how it’s become for us? Competing with our past?”
“You’re telling me, little one. I’m sure it’s happened before. I seem to recall something about the European Renaissance being in effect a rediscovery of the wisdoms of earlier civilizations in Greece and Egypt. Though I believe that was a very positive thing, probably nothing as desperate as this.”
Despite her disparaging words, Beni preferred this mode, this kind of directness. Ramirez had told him to push for it, that the host would treat him differently once he accessed it.
“My father died over in 37. Left our orchard one day, just upped and turned tomb-robber, tomb-visitor, whatever term covers it. It’s what more and more of us do. Spent all we had on maps, comp and the best sentry tech he could get. I didn’t find out till later! A neighbour came over and told me he hadn’t come out of 37. I didn’t even know he’d gone in, been planning it all those years. So I ask you: why would he do that? Why do any of us?”
“But I’m asking you that, little hunter.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m Beni.”
“ Beni. So as well as being in love you’re in hate and loss. Potent mixture. Think of it though. I’m five hundred years in your past, yet held accountable, made responsible somehow for a boy losing his father centuries later. And, marvellous paradox, without me, without the loss and envy, it seems your life, all your lives, would be lacking in purpose.”
“That’s not it.”
“Would be meaningless.”
“That’s not it!” The cry was swallowed in the ebbing, flowing, warm ceramic night. The thief had stopped walking at last, stood grimly silent. The ghost hovered, drifted, spoke.
“Maybe not. But perhaps you fear so. All your people. So you come here and test yourselves, steep yourselves in the mystery, could that be it? Plunder us from time to time. Carry out acts of astonishing vandalism.”
“I haven’t done that.” Beni started walking again, drew the phantom along with him.
“No, Beni. You haven’t yet. Thank you.”
“Ramirez didn’t.”
“No. I agree,” she said. “A lot don’t. You’re different to most. Ramirez was, both of you are, that curious blend of romantic and”-she said it very gently-“innocent. After something else.”
Doesn’t mean I won’t though, he almost said, felt he should say it, a young man scared and confused. But didn’t. “So what are we after then, Dormeuse?”
“Back to that, are we? Both wanting the same question answered.”
“I’m afraid so.” He continued walking, watching the scanner.
“All right. I allow you’re motivated by the quest, by envy and reprisals against the past, the need both to have the past mysterious yet know it. I allow disenchantment, rites of passage, because it’s there, all that. But we’re generalizing. It doesn’t tell me why you’re here, does it? Why Beni is here as an individual.”
Because I want to win, he could have said. Be up there among the greatest of them all: Ramirez, Callido, Asparan. But again didn’t, feared sounding arrogant, brash, deluded like so many who came here. He was after something more. He was.
“You’re being gentle with me, Dormeuse, so I’ll try to find an answer. A real answer.”
“Please do. And my name is Arasty. ‘Dormeuse’ means ‘sleeping woman’ in an ancient language. Which is what I am, just as you are ichneumon.”
“I’m what?”
“Ichneumon. Another very old word. Means ‘hunter’ or ‘tracker.’ A small animal that used to hunt along river banks. Ate the eggs of crocodiles.”
“Of what?”
“No matter. Beni and Arasty. We’re here now and, yes, I’m being gentle because you are.”
“But it’s a mode as well. Tactical.”
“Yes. It is.” The black eyes glittered.
“You could stop me?”
“I’m sure I can.” Glittered.
“Yet the fact is you want us here.”
“Oh, tell me why.”
“Not yet.”
“I’m curious. Tell me why.”
“I need to concentrate.”
For ahead, his cap-light’s glow fell on something different at last, caught in strange verticals, made new shadows for his eyes and tech to fathom.
He had reached the peristyle hall.
Beni had expected it to be little more than a widening of the axial corridor, with the seven pillars on either side keeping the passageway’s alignment from entranceway to central tholos. But when he entered, he found it went back even deeper behind the smooth featureless columns than his stylized display suggested, just as the corridors were so very much longer than the plan showed. The walls shone with the same vitreous pallor as the corridor, but opposite each other in the centre of each back wall was the circular intaglio motif Ramirez had told him of.
The intercept appeared beside him while he stood exploring one of the grooved mandalas with a finger.
“Know what that is?”
“Ramirez told me. It’s a maze. The classic seven-ring design. The archetypal unicursal maze built round a cross and four points. Used by lots of ancient peoples, the Romans, the Cretans and Syrians, the Irish, the medieval Christians-”
“Yes, yes. So what is its significance? Did Ramirez tell you?”
Beni smiled. “A unicursal maze has a single path from the entrance to the centre. It looks complex but is really very direct.”
“Why it appealed to
the Tastans too.”
“I’m sure.”
“ Beni, I fear you’re an optimist.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see it as something complex being ultimately very simple. Like your comp reading there.”
“So?”
“Why not a simple path made difficult. Look at your comp now.”
Beni glanced down, saw with a stab of alarm, panic, sudden terror, a new reading. He keyed randoms, saw only the new double-peristyle configuration.
“This does get interesting,” she said. “Oh, by the way, ‘ichneumon’ also refers to a parasitic, hymenopterous insect that lays its eggs on another’s larvae, using it as food for its own young as they hatch. Nice thought, yes? Little hunter.” And she vanished.
Beni had been told this would probably happen, the host’s hunt-mode surfacing, solicitous, caring, then cold, callous, vindictive, seeking to undermine any sense of hope.
He strode on, left the columned hall, plunged into the next length of corridor, just the tiniest dagger edge of doubt pushing through the confidence Ramirez had given him. What if there were a second peristyle hall? What if the tomb plan actually shifted, shunted him from one course to another, on and on? The mound was large enough.
Ramirez had spoken of it. It was a doubt he could still push aside. The tholos, the skull chamber, would be ahead. Not far.
The yellow cone pushing ahead became brighter, strengthening, whitening, as the host flashed in.
“Can we resume, Beni? You said that we want you here. Tell me why?”
Beni did not look at the intercept. He walked on, glancing at his display, then ahead, corridor, display, repeating that. He might have stayed silent, punished her for the trickery with the plan. But he sensed, just as Ramirez had told him, that it would probably be the worst thing to do. The tomb profiles liked to talk.
“It occurs to me, Arasty, that a sentry program would want visitors to test itself against, that the self whose tomb this is would have designed the tomb so its sentry profile would be exercised, challenged, kept entertained and satisfied. It’s what I’d do.”
“That’s a very smart observation. What made you think of it all of a sudden? Or was it also something-”
“I asked Ramirez about it that day in the orchard. Mentioned it before he did. We talked about what the tombs really were. He told me that your intercept, Dormeuse-Arasty-would appear at various times, run different modes-”
“And walk with you like this?”
“Not necessarily. Some intercepts did, he said. He also told me that whoever could code personalities and structure reality perception would not bother with ancient mortuary forms-corridors, burial chambers and such like-unless they were playing at something, wanted to invite plunderers.”
“Again, very shrewd. He didn’t say much when he was here but I miss this Ramirez. You’re both right. We do want you here. We give each other purpose.”
Beni watched his display for the slightest flicker, let his peripheral vision guide him. “We are your future. We let you exist in time.”
“Empowering each other. Yes, Beni. I like that. Like the fish and the fisher. Here for each other.”
“So let me get on with it, Arasty. You try to stop me. I try to reach the core chamber.”
“And what? Put your name up there with Ramirez’s. Scrawl it on the watch screen and hurry out again? Did he tell you he did that?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Did he tell you what else he did? Everything he did? You said Ramirez drew my face. Did he love me too, do you think? This image from an ancient age?”
Which part to answer? She was distracting him with her intriguing remarks, possibly giving deliberate untruths to unnerve him. “I’m not sure what he felt. Fascination. Determination to see you as the person who made this. Set this up for the future. It makes for a sort of intimacy. Something very powerful.”
“Intimacy. I’m flattered. I never expected this sort of-well-kinship across centuries.”
But Beni had stopped.
“What is it?” the phantom asked. “Worried that there’s no core chamber? No second peristyle?”
“I should have reached it. Show me the plan. The real one.”
“You’ve already seen it. Look.”
Again there was the alarm, the panic, terror surging up.
“You continue to make it more interesting.”
“It’s all I have, like you say. The chance to challenge, be entertained.”
Beni needed to talk it through. “One of the few things we learned from you Tastans was sealed comp technology.” He touched his scanner. “This can’t be tampered with, so you’ve interfered with my perceptual processes.”
He pressed a contact, randomized the grabs, sent surges through both equipment and self. He had practised this, did not flinch from the small electroshocks. The original tomb-plan came and went: single peristyle original, this new triple corridor display, double peristyle, single, double, triple-they flashed and flickered, cycled from one to the other.
It wasn’t his vision then-unless it was misinformation at the brain’s visual centre.
And when he looked at the phantom’s face, saw the smile under the black glass eyes, he understood her simple strategy.
“I can’t be sure now can I?”
Again, Ramirez’s words were there. Allow that the Stones have you.
Beni sighed as if in frustration and despair, closed his eyes, accessed, believed he accessed, the neural link Ramirez had given him, actually given him, a parting gift surgically implanted in the town clinic, a legacy from surrogate father to surrogate son.
The single peristyle configuration-classic Tastan grab-sat in the light of his mind’s eye. He was in the second length of corridor, so close to the chamber. He dared not linger over it in case she suspected. Again he sighed as if in frustration.
“Your decision?” she said.
“Excuse me?” Feigning bafflement, exhaustion, loss of resolve. Let her read those. The battle had been joined in earnest.
“On or back? I still may let you go. Perhaps with a souvenir as a reminder. Or perhaps none, provided you promise to come back and talk to me again. Keep me entertained.”
Was that a possibility he dared consider? This intercept-this tomb, to make the distinction-did seem different from all accounts, rhapsodizing, showing whimsy, negotiating, pretending to, taunting like this, first one mode then another, just as Ramirez had told him she would be.
“I’m your little egg-stealer, remember. We continue.”
“Hope is always beautiful,” she said.
Beni didn’t comment, strode on five, ten, twenty metres, surely into the tholos, but would not glance at his display now, nor at her, would not consult his link. He wanted her to court him, whatever came of it. This visit had to matter. But he was in the tholos, the skull chamber, he told himself. Had to be.
Finally she spoke, easily, losing no face by it, perhaps in a new mode, he couldn’t tell, though her question suggested it.
“So, little hunter, have you ever wondered why there are only 85 tombs? The Tastan culture lasted seven centuries, at least 35 generations. Why only 85 tombs?”
He didn’t understand all her words. Generations. “Tell me.”
“Guess.”
“No more games.”
“Entertainment, remember? There really are only my games here. I’ll reward you.”
“How?”
“Trust that I will. I’ll give you a clue. We were not necessarily royalty. Not rulers.”
It did intrigue him. “Another caste in your society?”
“In a sense. Go on.”
Beni fought to think, pressured by the changeless, vitreous dark, by the unchanging yellow fan of his lamp showing not the tholos but only more and more corridor, its glow whitened by the added glow of the figure floating, standing beside him, seeming to.
Tholos, maze, wherever he was, the intercept really did seem to wan
t an answer.
“Our culture is five hundred years after yours,” he said.
“Good. Yes?”
“But”-he hated saying it-“is debased by comparison. Technologically.”
“Such finesse, little hunter.”
“You belonged to a scientist caste.”
“Wrong.”
“A holy order. Priests. Sacerdotes.”
“No.”
“Criminals being punished.”
“Fool!” She said it with incredible fury. The black eyes glittered. “Don’t you know any history? What happened to our culture?”
Beni was stunned by her vehemence, the unconcealed contempt. It told him something he did not yet understand.
“You vanished,” he said, and then, to show he did know some history, what Ramirez had told him, added: “Like the Mayans. The Anasazi. Your cities were abandoned, allowed to run down; most were reduced to slag by housekeeping programs-”
“So where did we go? Our millions? Our millions, Beni?”
What did she want him to say? And millions. The Tastan millions.
“Into these tombs?” The certainty of it amazed him. “All coded in. Immortal. You’re the guardians of your race! Eighty-five repositories but housing millions.”
Arasty’s expression may have been the result of holistic psychonic printing or just some simulated response selected from a housekeeping menu, but Beni saw what looked like genuine scorn, genuine revulsion. If it were a deception then it was a subtle one, something naked, seeming spontaneous, well beyond the disapproval and impatience it resembled.
What am I missing? Beni asked himself, and with it felt a conviction. She needs me to guess. It really is important that I do. But what did she-it-want him to say? He wanted to shout the question. Didn’t dare now. All he could think of was to show humility, self-effacement, and hope for patience.
“Please, Arasty, help me more. This is important.” He hoped the compliment, his respectful tone, would do it.
The phantom watched him sidelong with her dark eyes just as a human would, as if in fact a discrete entity deciding, not a defence intercept scanning precedents, selecting options.
