Event Horizon Threshold

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  Seeing the guys had turned around and headed back in their direction, he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t know what made me say that.”

  The impulse to tell the truth, Roslyn wondered?

  He was angry because he was scared and wanted to beat somebody up and she seemed like the safest bet for a punching bag?

  She thought she could honestly say that she’d never particularly liked Paul, but she hadn’t disliked him.

  “Maybe we need to just focus on doing the job and getting home?”

  He nodded. “I’ll get my equipment ….”

  “You wish to stay here and collect specimens? Or move on?” Aurek asked.

  “I’m almost done. I wanted to get rubbings just in case the photos aren’t clear enough to pick up the details and then we can move.” She glanced at him questioningly. “Or we can stay here a bit and I’ll look around?”

  Aurek glanced around. “Paul has gone again?”

  “He went to get his equipment.”

  Aurek’s lips tightened. “We have moved … everything.”

  “Oh. I just figured you’d left most of it till we settled on a new spot.”

  “We cannot afford to lose any of it,” Aurek pointed out.

  “True. Why don’t we focus on setting up a new base camp and then I can look around?”

  Aurek studied the wall where she stood and finally moved past her and entered. Beyond the façade there was very little building left and most of it seemed to be piled in the floor, as if a blast-wave had struck it from three sides.

  That seemed unlikely. Roslyn couldn’t think of anything that would create that sort of blast except, maybe multiple blasts, which just didn’t make sense.

  Most likely it had simply fallen in with age.

  She had no way to test the age of anything, but she’d taken samples in the hope that it could be tested. Although, she wasn’t certain that any of the testing methods used on Earth would be accurate at all. They were based on radiation and that was based on Earth’s particular signature.

  She felt a little overwhelmed when she considered that—and the fact that generations of scientists had been collecting data on Earth and she was only one lone archeologist.

  And Paul, their geologist was struggling more than she was at the moment and she wasn’t in such great shape.

  She shrugged it off with an effort.

  She wasn’t expected to have all the answers, just to do what she could to collect as much data as possible.

  She literally tripped over a major discovery and sprawled out.

  Dylan, who was closest at that point, crouched to help her up as she wallowed around trying to figure out how to get up off of moving, shifting debris.

  And there it was, staring at her with one blind eye … and a gaping mouth.

  “Oh my god!” she gasped. “It’s human.”

  Aurek and Tor strode quickly over to them in response, staring down at the skull—or piece of a skull—Roslyn had fallen over.

  “Careful! It … there’s no telling how old it is.”

  She carefully removed the debris around it, trying to discover if it was still attached to the body.

  Despite her first impulse, she knew it couldn’t possibly be human. It was clearly old even though she had no way to determine how old.

  But it looked like a human skull.

  She glanced at Aurek. “Did a team come before us?”

  He met her gaze. “I am certain they did not.”

  “At all? I mean, I heard there were others trying to break the code. You’re sure they—anyone—weren’t ahead of us?”

  “To my knowledge—none.”

  “It couldn’t be human, then,” she said almost to herself. “There’s charring here.” She glanced around. “I don’t see any sign of a fire, but that could explain it falling in—the building.”

  “I think we will leave you to study,” Aurek said.

  Roslyn nodded absently, thoroughly focused on the search now. “Could someone bring my cases?”

  She’d forgotten she asked for them by the time they were brought.

  Tor set them down in front of her, smiling at her when she looked up. “I am to watch over.”

  She couldn’t help but smile, although wryly, at the memory that dredged up. “Just be careful where you put your feet.”

  He moved to an area she’d cleared and crouched down to watch.

  “Hey, could you hand me the big brush?”

  He searched the cases and handed one over. “Great! This will work. Thanks!”

  She didn’t look up again until she realized it was getting too dark to see. “Hey! Who’s blocking …? Oh,” Aurek and Dylan were standing behind Tor, looking down at her. “What?”

  “It is dusk,” Aurek said.

  “Dusk?” Roslyn repeated blankly, glancing around. “That late?”

  Instead of answering, they started packing up her cases. She bit her lip, struggling with the urge to tell them to leave them the hell alone.

  If she’d been on Earth on a dig she would’ve demanded they bring lights.

  Sighing, she handed over her tools and struggled to get up.

  Aurek hauled her to her feet and it was all she could do to keep from groaning. “God! Cramp!” She felt like an old woman.

  “I will carry you.”

  “No! No! Just give me a minute. I need to walk it off.”

  Thankfully it didn’t take too long to walk most of the kinks out.

  Paul was at the campsite, crouched in front of the fire, staring at the licking flames. Despite the ugly confrontation earlier, she was glad to see him. Glad to see he was ok.

  “Did you eat already?”

  He glanced at her when she spoke, but he seemed to look through her. “We have waited for you,” Aurek answered for him.

  Dylan passed out the supplies and then settled across the fire from Roslyn with his.

  “I think they might have been taken out by an asteroid,” Paul said conversationally. “I noticed a layer of ash when we stopped at the creek that first night—if the same rules apply here—that would be somewhere around the fifty million year mark. Could be older. Anyway, I’ve dug around when we stopped every day and every place I’ve checked I’ve found the same layer of ash at about the same depth. Seems like it could be pretty widespread, but it’s definitely in this area so it could have wiped out the civilization that was here. Not saying it was an extinction level event, but pretty widespread.”

  Roslyn frowned, trying to decide if the evidence of fire that she’d found might match that time frame. It didn’t seem to—she found it hard to believe the ruins were that old and still standing, and the exposed bones …. But it had to be said that the rulers they were accustomed to using just couldn’t be counted on here.

  “I think the builders of this city built after that—maybe a lot later. I agree we can’t use the markers we use on Earth because we just don’t know enough, yet. On Earth, though, we have structures dating back thousands of years, but nothing going back on that level. And all of the oldest structures have been buried over time. They had to be dug up and the discovery was only possible because of records that were left and the people that orally passed down bits and pieces of history. Without something like that it’s just … not likely we’ll find more than … the tip of the iceberg. Now, maybe, if they keep working on that ‘message’ in the DNA they’ll find a record of the entire history of these people and possibly find out what happened. Why they left and why they went to Earth and why they decided to leave us a message in our DNA.”

  Paul shrugged. “Most of those you’re talking about are in Africa or at least the Middle East—and covered by desert sand. That was a desert forming that we crossed coming here. In time, if it follows what we’ve seen before on Earth, it’s going to grow and could, potentially, eventually cover this entire city. There’s one growing on the east coast of the U.S. now.”

  Roslyn smiled with an effort. “Honestly, I figured we were just
going to come away with more questions and no answers. Even if we had somebody to just sit us down and tell us the whole story it would take months to verify it or even parts of it. Coming here blind, with nothing but pieces of a giant puzzle that we’ve found? I think we’re never going to know what happened here. But I’m pretty sure that they didn’t send soldiers just to take care of us—knowing our government. They were hoping to find technology and I don’t think we’re going to find that.

  “I mean, I can see reason to hope the civilization that left us that message could still be around, but I can’t believe anyone actually expected it.

  “We’ve got Marvin’s specimens, mine, and yours. And we have a little time, I guess, to see what else we can find, but I think that’s all we’re going home with. I don’t even have time to thoroughly examine the place we found today.”

  She thought about telling him that the bones she’d found suggested the aliens looked a lot like humans, but even if he was interested in that it really had nothing to do with him. It was information she needed to pass to her employers and they probably wouldn’t appreciate her ‘gossiping’ about it.

  It bothered her that Paul was acting so strange—unlike the person she thought she’d gotten to know or at least was starting to. But then again, she doubted she was acting ‘normal’ either and she knew she was going to be alright. She just needed time to absorb the shocks she’d experienced. Maybe that was all Paul needed to get on a more even keel?

  She didn’t spend a lot of time focused on him, though. She was staying in the soldiers’ tent now and she couldn’t decide if she was looking forward to crawling into her sleeping bag beside them or more anxious than excited.

  It was nice to have big strong men around, but …. Well, as Paul had pointed out so nastily, they didn’t seem to have a lot of interest in her sexually.

  She wasn’t sure if they had a particular interest in keeping her alive or just a general ‘doing my job’ interest.

  Or maybe it was pity?

  She wished to hell, though, that that had occurred to her before she’d spent the day crawling around on a filthy floor, digging through filth, and sweating like a pig.

  Because there was no place to bathe now and she wasn’t stupid enough to waste their water in a useless effort to clean up.

  It turned out she needn’t have worried about ‘fighting them off’ anyway. She was so exhausted she fell asleep almost as soon as she found a comfortable position and didn’t even know when the men joined her. She woke up the next morning with Dylan plastered to her back and Aurek curled around her.

  She didn’t know if Dylan was asleep, but Aurek was staring at her and looked like he had been for some time. Disconcerted, she struggled, trying to shove Dylan off until he rolled away and she managed to unzip her bag and get up.

  Paul, she saw as soon as she emerged, was already up, sitting cross legged outside the tent he’d shared with Marvin. He didn’t look like he’d slept at all and it occurred to her that he might not have been willing to go back in the tent. It might not just look like he hadn’t slept.

  That wasn’t a good thing for the state of his mental health.

  He needed rest to recover from the shock.

  Dismissing it with an effort, she focused on her own concerns. No water for bathing magically appeared so she wet her cloth down and just mopped off what she could—bathing her face and hands—and felt better even if she doubted she looked a lot better.

  She was glad she went to the effort to clean up, such as it was, because it was that day that they found the aliens.

  Chapter Eight

  Excitement flooded Roslyn when she spied the obelisk in the center of the courtyard-like area they had wandered into. It was covered in glyphs! It might well be the Rosetta stone they needed to figure out what was written all over the place!

  Gasping in pleasure, she surged toward it, shaking so badly with excitement that she had trouble getting her camera out to take pictures.

  Apparently, they’d rushed toward it as a group, because when she turned to say something to Paul, she discovered a group of aliens had just entered the courtyard from the other direction and Paul screamed in her ear.

  When he screamed, they screamed—several of them anyway.

  She was guessing the scientists among them, because the lethal looking, humanoid robot soldiers accompanying them didn’t even flinch and the others jumped and screamed.

  They also looked as if they were debating whether to run or not, despite the escort.

  The robots advanced in what Rosyln thought was a threatening manner.

  Aurek, Dylan, and Tor advanced toward them.

  Rosyln thought she might faint or maybe piss her pants.

  Fortunately for her blushes, she had the tendency to clench when she was frightened.

  “Aurek!” she whispered loudly. “Come back! Don’t go over there!”

  He either didn’t hear her or he ignored her.

  “Get back here you idiot before they shoot you!” Paul whispered a little louder.

  Aurek lifted one hand and gave him the three finger salute.

  Paul gasped in outrage. “Did you see that? He shot a fucking bird at me!”

  Roslyn clamped a hand over his mouth. “I don’t think this is a good time to … uh … argue with each other,” she whispered when he fought her off.

  So far, nobody had moved since they’d spotted each other—except the soldiers had advanced on one another and were currently locked in a Mexican standoff.

  Except their group didn’t have nearly as many soldiers as the aliens did and theirs weren’t as big and mean looking.

  Roslyn didn’t know if she was more terrified for the guys or herself, but she thought it might be too late to beat a retreat. Maybe they could try the wildlife thing? Back away very slowly?

  There were some things that were just territorial and happy enough if you got the fuck away from them.

  Not bears.

  Somehow she didn’t think jumping up and down and waving their arms to look bigger was going to be the right tactic here.

  The distance thing, though ….

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t just her sphincter that was clenched. Her entire body seemed frozen, refusing even a direct mental command to move.

  Aurek spoke.

  She didn’t have a fucking clue of what he said, but he said something—or one of them did—because the aliens and their machines all reacted as if he’d thrown something at them besides words. A shockwave traveled through them.

  Moments passed. One of the machines spoke.

  Somehow, it didn’t sound the same, though.

  Were they talking to each other or not, she wondered?

  Whether either side understood or not, the verbalization continued for long enough Roslyn began to feel the strain of having every muscle tensed for a sprint she wasn’t able to execute. The sun continued its trek toward the zenith and then began to fall toward the horizon.

  After what felt like hours and hours, Aurek, Dylan, and Tor seemed to relax fractionally, and they began to back slowly toward Roslyn and Paul.

  Roslyn and Paul exchanged a long, completely uncomprehending look and then, as one, they began to back slowly toward the opening where they’d entered the courtyard.

  Aurek and his men reached the point where Roslyn and Paul had been standing and then Aurek glanced around, frowned when he saw they were almost at the entrance and then turned slowly and headed toward them.

  Dylan and Tor continued to back away until they’d covered about half that distance and then Dylan turned. Tor retreated backwards until he reached the doorway.

  Aurek grabbed Roslyn’s arm as soon as they were out of sight and began to hustle her away. “What happened? What did you say? What did they say?”

  “I have no fucking clue,” Aurek responded.

  “But … but ….”

  “We attempted communication.”

  “Oh my god!” Paul exclaimed. “We’re dead!
I knew it! I just fucking knew it!”

  “Shut up!” Dylan and Tor growled at the same time.

  He glared at them in outraged indignation, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “What are we going to do?” Roslyn asked shakily when they got back to their base camp.

  “Think,” Aurek responded.

  Deciding that was her cue to shut up, Roslyn fell to pacing and gnawing on her fingernails.

  Paul fell into step beside her. “Did they seem hostile to you? Because they seemed very hostile to me!”

  Roslyn nodded. “I think they were as stunned to see us as we were them.”

  “But why? They left us a message. Wasn’t that an invitation to come?”

  Roslyn gaped at him. “My god, Paul! That message was left a hundred thousand years ago or so—maybe longer. We don’t know when it was introduced into our DNA, but it damned well wasn’t recently! Why would you think these people would know anything about it when we didn’t?”

  “Good point! But I wasn’t saying they’d know. It was an invitation. You’d think they wouldn’t leave it if they didn’t expect us to show up at some point and they would’ve been more open …. I don’t know! Damn it! I just didn’t expect hostility.”

  Roslyn frowned, thinking. “You know …. Maybe they aren’t the aliens we thought we’d find? What if … what if the aliens that left that for us really are gone? But they left, like bread crumbs, all over the place?”

  Paul thought that over. “Sort of like us meeting up with us?”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Ok, I guess that would explain it. They made the first advance, though, and they were better equipped.”

  Roslyn shrugged. “They definitely had us outnumbered. Maybe … maybe we could see it as a reasonable, but cautious, attempt to make contact?”

  She didn’t realize how jumpy she was until Aurek spoke almost directly beside her and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “They are hostile,” he said flatly.

  Roslyn gaped at him. “How do you know? You said neither of you could understand what the other was saying.”

  “Because we are hostile and they are here for the same thing that we came for.”