Alien Artifacts

by Seanan McGuire

  He recognized the logo that swirled between large, tinted windows even before he shone his helmet lights over the ship’s blocky hull: a tourist cruiser from Jupiter’s largest orbiting vacation station. It was sinking nose-first, plowed deeply enough into the patch of thin ice that the cockpit lay submerged. The passenger cabin tilted at a steep angle above the fractured floe.

  Wealthy tourists with an inexperienced pilot, Armando thought. Then he remembered the geyser hurling water miles into the sky and sending it back as snow. It was the most spectacular sight on Europa. Or maybe he violated the warnings about the unstable crust here. But if I can rescue them before the patrol comes, perhaps they will give me a reward. Maybe I will even make the newsfeeds.

  I need to hurry, before the ship sinks into the sea.

  Shadowy movement behind one large window—and renewed screams—sent a chill like an icy paw down Armando’s spine. She could be my sweet Valeria, or my little Yazmin.

  “I am coming!” he called again in Spanish, then drew a deep breath and leaped for the aft hatch.

  He had to tug twice at the emergency lever to release it. As he hurled the outer hatch away, sending it spinning across dull whiteness, a flashing red panel on the inner hatch snagged his eye: CABIN DEPRESSURIZED.

  “No! No! Valeria!” he gasped, and threw one heavy sealing bolt and then the other. “Stand clear!” he shouted. Gripping the frame to anchor himself, he kicked the inner hatch open.

  His helmet lights illuminated two pressure-suited figures—a woman clutching a young child—crouched and teetering on the back of a padded bench against one bulkhead, above the rising, frigid water. The woman stretched a hand to him and cried out. He didn’t speak her tongue, but the terror in her plea spoke for itself.

  Movement in the submerged area between the two benches tore his attention from her. A blunt head poked briefly from the water, scaly and lichen-gray, with a protruding lower jaw, like a small bulldog in armor plate. Crimson drooled from two-inch pointed teeth and swirled in the water around another pressure-suited adult floating face down.

  A nightmare lunging from an opium dream.

  Armando’s eyes widened and his stomach twisted. “Ice demon!” The eel-like creatures haunted Europa’s dark seas.

  It leaped for him, craggy spine arching from the water. The child shrieked in his earphones. Armando winced, then sprang onto the opposite bench, but not before its whip of a tail lashed his leg. If its teeth catch my pressure suit...

  Must find a machete. His gaze raked the cabin for something that would serve. The bulkhead between cockpit and passenger cabin sagged, wrenched loose in the crash, revealing a steel frame. Is it sharp enough? Heavy enough? Can I tear it free?

  It is all I have.

  The forward end of the cabin already lay under a meter of water. Three or four ice demons, averaging eight feet long and seven inches around, might be coiled in that space, he knew. Plated backs circled and splashed around his perch as he seized the bulkhead frame and tugged. He felt the rending protests through rubber-coated gloves rather than heard them.

  As the frame tore loose, two ice demons reared like vipers, mouths agape. Armando drove the length of steel into the nearest one’s gullet like a spear with such force it plunged out the back of the monster’s skull. Its whole length thrashed for a long minute, splashing the cabin. Armando shook it off his improvised spear and searched the roiling water for the other.

  When it erupted, twisting at him over the bobbing corpse, Armando brought his steel edge down on its broad head. The bony plate split, spattering him with crimson. It shook its head, lunged, snapped at him. Armando struck again across its neck. The head spun away, vanished with a splash, and its writhing, sinuous body swept blood-washed waves about the cabin.

  Armando didn’t relax for several moments. Are there more?

  After his pulse slowed and his raking breaths subsided in his earphones—and no more ice demons raised their heads—he twisted toward the huddled woman and child.

  Large, brown-black eyes gazed at him through bubble helmets. Armando noted olive-complexioned faces, scraped and bloodied, and disheveled, long hair, the woman’s dyed dark red. Latina? He extended his hand. “We must go,” he said in Spanish. “More ice demons will come. They’re attracted to heat, and they can smell the blood.”

  Puzzlement creased the mother’s forehead between a purple bruise and fine, penciled brows. She stared, cut lips slightly parted. She doesn’t understand me.

  “¿Hablas español?” Armando asked. “Speak English?”

  She hesitated. “Little.”

  Her unfamiliar accent fell oddly on his ears. He repeated his warning slowly in English. “Understand?”

  “Yes.” She peered around him, at the pressure-suited body awash between their benches. “My husband...”

  “I’m sorry,” Armando said. “We cannot take him. Come.” He eased the little girl from her arms, took her by the elbow, and steered her toward the aft hatch.

  She half-turned to peer back once. Armando heard her moan, “Faisal...” followed by soft ululations through his helmet speakers as she followed, blinking quickly behind her faceplate.

  Armando carried the child to solid ice beyond the shifting fractures, then returned to the hatch for the woman. “Hold onto me and jump hard,” he said. “Jump to your child.”

  They bounced on landing. As Armando steadied her on her feet, a thermal reading appeared in his faceplate. He lifted his gaze to scan the near distance, found the source high on an ice shelf. Curiosity drew his brows together. There is no life here on the surface. Nothing should be up there. But it is very close to my ship.

  He led the woman and child toward his ship first, had not taken thirty steps before he heard a tremendous crack. The ice rumbled beneath his feet and he turned to see the stranded ship sink beneath the ice.

  He climbed toward the icy ridge ahead, reached his little freighter, brought out a first-aid kit and his spare sleeping bag from a battered compartment, and started fresh coffee in his old maker. “Take care of your injuries and rest,” he told the woman. “I must check something, and then we will go.”

  He exited the hatch. This far from the ice geyser, there was little new snow. The plume of snow and ice was nearly a quarter of a mile away, but the planets frail winds had shifted high in the atmosphere, so that the snow was beginning to pick up outside the ship.

  Armando picked his way through the broken ice and climbed about a hundred meters, clawing his way up a rugged cliff with his bulky gloves and boots. As he hauled himself onto an ice shelf, a glow caught his eye. He approached it warily, skin prickling at the nape of his neck.

  The source of the thermal reading appeared to be a huge flower laid out on the ice. Nine petals—each about a meter long and half a meter wide, made of some heavy, bronze material—surrounded a dim, ghostly light. The patterns engraved into the petals were like nothing any human had ever made—strange designs that reminded Armando of printed circuits. The petals themselves must have been warm, for no snow had collected upon them, and the flakes of ice that touched them immediately turned to steam. The glowing light in the center looked almost human in shape. To Armando, with the quality of the artwork, the thing seemed…a relic, like an ancient statue of Jesus in a cathedral back in Colombia. It seemed somehow familiar. He dropped to his knees. It must be an alien’s shrine.

  The pallid light suddenly twisted like a flame in a wind and a pair of deep violet eyes gazed into his. Armando felt an electric jolt and the gaze seemed to penetrate into him, scrambling his thought. He recoiled, falling on his butt, and scrambled away, crossing himself. “Mother Mary, save me!”

  The eyes vanished as if in a swirl of vapor. The apparition shivered and receded into the ground and Armando’s heartbeat steadied a bit. He felt his forehead and squinted. He felt as if something had entered his head, had burrowed into his skull.

  “I won’t touch it, I won’t touch it!” he vowed under his breath, continuing to ba
ck away. But somehow he felt that it had already touched him.

  Those violet eyes, almond in shape, slanted, hung before his vision: alien eyes peering from the snow.

  Trembling and suddenly weak, he picked his way down from the ice shelf. A thought occurred to him: mankind had visited hundreds of stars in the past century and found no sign of intelligent life. Armando was a poor man for a spacer. If I report this, it might make some good money. Scientists will want to buy it. The cost of fuel was tremendous, and this unexpected landing had put him in the red. If he did not make some money on this trip, somehow, he would go bankrupt. Perhaps I can make enough money to be rich. He was carried away by the excitement such a find would cause.

  In his ship, he found the woman and child sharing sips of coffee from his old cup. Their pressure suits lay crumpled on the deck like empty chrysalises. The little girl, about five he guessed, sat sniffling on her mother’s lap, her arm wrapped in gauze through which blood still oozed. Their clothing, obviously made of fine fabric and cut in the most current fashion, bespoke wealth. Of course. Only the very wealthy can afford to tour the planets.

  “There is a religious colony nearby,” Armando said as he shucked his own pressure suit. “They have a good hospital. I will take you there to receive care.”

  “Thank you.” Without lifting her gaze to his, the woman asked through swollen lips, “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  “I am Armando Mendoza, from Colombia.” He arched an eyebrow. “And you?”

  She hesitated, eyes still lowered. “Sabiya,” she whispered. “We are from Saudi Arabia. We came to see the giant...” her brows creased as she searched for the word, “cryogeyser.”

  Ah, one of the extremely wealthy. And the Arab people are known for their hospitality. Perhaps she will help recover my losses.

  Armando moved about the compact living space, securing compartments and hatches for launch. “And your daughter?”

  “Hadil,” Sabiya said.

  “Ah! I have a daughter, too, Yazmin.” He smiled at the child, who watched him through wide eyes. “She will be your size by now. And I have a son, Tomaso, who is nine. He was your size when I left home more than three years ago.” He returned his attention to the woman. “You must come to the co-pilot seat and strap in now, so that we can leave.”

  He watched the fuel gauges of each engine closely through the crushing roar of launch. So little fuel left.

  “Why did you leave your family?” Sabiya asked as the pressure lifted at last. “Why did you come here?”

  Armando sighed. “I want to make a better life for my wife and children. I want to make enough money so that, when someone finds a new world to inhabit, I can take them to escape all the madness on Earth, all of the wars and plagues and shrinking resources. In my country there is a saying: ‘Any shit that can happen, will happen.’” He gave his head a dismal shake.

  “So I am an ice miner. Ice is the only source of water for the space colonies, and it pays better than what I can make on Earth. But I miss my family very much.” “Miss” is too weak of a word. I long for them. I ache for them. His heart felt heavy in his chest.

  They flew in silence, rising above Europa, its white expanse marred by striations of red—land beneath its frozen exterior. The woman and child fell asleep, but Armando stayed awake, his own eyes aching.

  His brain hurt. It felt…overfull, like a coffeepot boiling over.

  When the colony’s station lights came into view, a cluster of faint twinkles like stars far ahead, the woman stirred a bit. Armando said, “I had just launched from Europa when I heard your shuttle’s distress call and I went back. I was not planning to launch twice. It has burned so much fuel I will not be able to leave the colony station where I am taking you. My load of ice will not cover the cost to fill my tanks.” He paused to give her a beseeching gaze. “Perhaps, out of gratitude for saving your life and your daughter’s, you can give me a little money to refuel my ship?”

  For the first time, the downcast dark eyes lifted to meet his. An indignant spark replaced pain and grief. “Virtue is its own reward, Mister Mendoza.”

  The words took his breath like a sharp blow. He stared in shock at her tone, but she twisted her head away.

  Virtue does not feed a starving man, he thought.

  Neither spoke again until they had docked, and Armando assisted Sabiya and Hadil down from the cockpit and into the hands of waiting medics. Then he said, “I hope you and your daughter will be well.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Glowering at the sting of it, Armando pivoted on his heel and strode through ringing passages to the administrator’s offices. He knew the Chief of Security, a lanky man with a blond braid down his back.

  “Olie,” Armando said, “I have found something strange on Europa. It is an alien shrine, I think.” He described its shape and the ghostly eyes, as well as its coordinates. “It could make you a lot of money as a tourist attraction.”

  Olie chuckled, and tapped his desk console. “Higgins, vector one of the rescue ships from the crash-site to the following coordinates, will you? My buddy Armando says he found an alien shrine or something up on the ice shelf.”

  “Roger, sir,” Higgins replied. “Could it be related to the crash? Maybe caused it somehow?”

  “Unknown,” Olie said, and Armando came around the desk to watch the monitor over Olie’s shoulder. Shortly, the ice shelf came into view. The surveyor dipped low, circled twice. There was no heat signature. Nothing metallic gleamed back.

  Indeed, the ground was covered in new-fallen snow.

  “Cryogeyser erupted pretty heavily a couple minutes ago,” the pilot said. “Looks like it buried everything. Want me to land?”

  Olie bit his lip. “Negative. You’re too close to the geyser. We can go back and look when things calm down.”

  Armando knew what that meant. It might take years for the geyser to calm down, and by then the site might be buried beneath a hundred meters of ice—or more.

  Olie shook his head. “Sorry, amigo.”

  Seated in a bustling dining hall minutes later, Armando felt like a jaguar in a shrinking cage, the bars drawing tight about him. He’d sold his ice, but did not have enough money to refuel. His only option was to sell his ship.

  There will be enough to leave a little profit. Enough to start a new seed fund, maybe buy another ship—in twenty years, if all went well.

  He ached to see his wife and children, but not as a failure. He did not want to be trapped.

  He called his boss. “I need to go home, Mister Roades. I want to sell my ship.”

  The blocky face that scowled back through his pad had heavy jowls and close-cropped hair. “Contract’s for five years, not three, Mendoza. You’ll incur substantial penalties. Quit now and all I can give you for the ship is the price of the fuel home. Understand that?”

  “I understand, sir. I need to go home now. But…a little something to show for three years, I beg, please.”

  When Mister Roades had vanished from his pad, Armando studied it morosely. I wish I could send a video message to Valeria and tell her I am coming home. But it would cost too much.

  He departed the colony station a few hours later without a glance back. The newsfeed playing in the station’s dining hall had clenched his insides into knots. Among the many tales of plagues and wars, it had shown a nuclear bomb exploding in Maracaibo, less than two hundred kilometers from his home. He imagined his family running for the shelters, like cockroaches trying to escape the light. A warlord will send his army of cyborgs and killer robots across the border through the jungles. How soon until they reach Cartagena? Oh, my Valeria and little Yazmin and Tomaso! I hope I will reach you first.

  He kissed their smiling images in the holoplates, returned them carefully to the chest pocket of his flight suit, and slid into the cryogenic capsule for the journey home. Six weeks is far too long a time.

  He dreamed of the ghostly face that had risen from among the artificial petals
on the ice shelf, the great, deep-violet eyes that had met his. The image seemed to burrow deep into his skull, and he imagined it seeping through the Ecuadoran jungle.

  * * *

  He woke to soft chimes at his ears, yawned as he released the sleep capsule’s seals, and climbed out with care. Cryogenic sleep always left him somewhat shaky.

  A glance around from the foot of his ship’s ramp confirmed his location. Huge letters on the docking bay’s bulkheads declared L-5 TRENTON.

  The two men who waited at the bay’s pressure hatch—one a tall African, the other a blond Russian—smiled broadly when they saw him. My old friends! But it has been so long that I do not remember their names. Though mortified at the gap in his memory, Armando crossed to them at once, his arms flung wide in welcome. “Did Mister Roades send you to meet me?”

  “Nyet.” The Russian gave him a back-pounding bear hug and a booming laugh. “I’ve known you longer than your employment with Mister Roades. But, I am embarrassed to admit, I have forgotten your name.”

  “I feel better now.” Armando grinned. “I’m Armando, Armando Mendoza. Please, both of you, remind me of your names?”

  Flanked by Dmitri and Zawadi, Armando paced along a narrow passage to the offices of Roades Interplanetary Mining, LTD. Armando still felt confused. Once reminded of their names, he remembered his old friends…he just couldn’t recall where they’d met. He tried to shrug it off. Cyrosleep could play weird tricks with a man. It would come back to him. “Tell me what has happened on Earth during the last six weeks,” he begged. “I am very concerned for my family.” Desperation to see them, to hold them tightly, curled his hands into fists.