Alien Artifacts

by Seanan McGuire

  “Don’t make me choose,” I whispered. But who was I pleading with—the same God who had brought me here? If He existed, then He was a merciless bastard.

  My comm buzzed. It was Captain Basinger, wanting a report on my progress. Numbly I told her I was about to head back to base camp, and I would give her a full report when I arrived. That left me about two hours to decide which course of action was the right one. But deep in my heart I knew that both were right, and neither was right, and whichever one I chose would leave me haunted by ghosts forever.

  I thought about the Bellasi colonies we’d visited: serene, but oh so sterile. Long before the Bellasi died out they had lost the spark that earned them the stars in the first place. Was that what would happen to humanity as well? Would the price of Bellasi contentment be the loss of all that made us human? That was a kind of death, wasn’t it?

  Slowly I rose to my feet, walked to the pedestal, and stared at the Interface. Then I reached out and picked it up. It was surprisingly light, for something so weighty in significance. I brought it back to my lander and put it on the seat beside me. Trying not to look at it. Trying not to feel.

  Sometimes it’s not a question of what the right choice is, so much as what choice we think we can live with.

  * * *

  Maybe I should have thrown it into a volcano, Frodo-style, so that it was destroyed forever. Maybe the deep sea crevasse that I dropped it into won’t be enough to guard it from those who, if they learned it was there, would empty the oceans of this world with a teaspoon if they had to, to retrieve it.

  People will keep looking for it, of course. Caswell has already come up with a theory about why the Bellasi homeworld was never the right location for our search, and he’s fine-tuning his algorithms so we’ll know where to look next. No one’s questioning him about it. We all understand how important it is for people to believe that the Interface is still out there somewhere, a magical solution to all of our ills, just over the next horizon. Even if we told people it didn’t exist, no one would believe us. And so we keep searching.

  Maybe an ancient knight did find the Holy Grail one day. Maybe he held it in his hand, awed by its holiness, and then God sent him a vision of what human society would become if he brought it home. And he wound up leaving it behind. Or hiding it away. Or even destroying it. Because he realized that sometimes wanting a thing is more important than having it.

  I named the planet Pandora. The others argued in favor of names they liked better, but we had agreed long ago that we would take turns naming the planets we found, and this time, by chance, the choice fell to me. So Pandora it was.

  On Sunday 219, we go back into jumpsleep. Black, dreamless, obliterating.

  I’m looking forward to it.

  ROUND AND ROUND WE RIDE

  THE CAROUSEL OF TIME

  Seanan McGuire

  The light over the airlock glowed a steady red. Innocuous as it seemed, the air on this planet would spell a swift and certain death to any human foolish enough to take a breath. Gwen stood looking at the light, how red it was, how bright, how very human.

  “When did red become the color of ‘don’t do that’?” she mused aloud. The ship’s A.I., long since programmed to ignore her rhetorical questions, did not reply. Gwen continued looking at the light. Red was for sunsets, for apples, for lipstick. Red was a beautiful thing. There was no reason for it to carry the connotations that it did.

  The sound of footsteps in the hall alerted her to the approach of a crewmate. She turned in time to see Heather come around the corner, tugging her suit into place. The other woman was taller, broader at the hips and shoulders, and constantly complained about how the standard-issue environment suits had been designed for men first, making it difficult for any woman over a size eight to fit into them without substantial alterations. Gwen, whose own suit had been custom-made by the university sponsoring her presence on the trip, generally stayed quiet and let Heather run herself down. It was easier than trying to join the discussion, which was more of a monologue intended to be performed for anyone who would listen.

  Heather looked up from her suit. “Gwen,” she said, with evident surprise. “We’re not heading out for another ten minutes.”

  “I know,” said Gwen. “I wanted to be here when we did.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Yes, I do.” Gwen’s words were firm, implacable: she left no room for argument.

  Heather blinked, seemingly taken aback. In the six months since they’d left Earth, she had never seen Gwen assert herself more than absolutely necessary. She’d been starting to think that the university geek didn’t have any spine at all. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

  Gwen looked at her steadily. “I am an archeologist. I am on this ship—this cramped, confined, crowded ship—because I am an archeologist. Because the university that helped to fund this voyage wanted me here, to be sure that what may be the greatest archeological discovery in over three hundred years is not accidentally damaged or disturbed before it can be fully cataloged.”

  “We wouldn’t do that.”

  “You have done that. You, and others like you. The last three extraterrestrial relic sites have all been disturbed by spacers who found them, before the science teams could arrive.” Without a full and accurate record of what those sites had originally looked like, there was no way of knowing whether pieces had been removed, damaged, destroyed—or even just moved out of the position they’d been in when they were found. Given the number of “authentic artifacts from Charon” to have shown up on the black market, the general assumption within the antiquities community was that a huge number of priceless archeological finds had disappeared before they could be cataloged. It had to stop.

  That was why, when the probes had reported what looked like artificial structures on Alpha Centauri Bb, every university in the solar system had started shouting, demanding that they be allowed to fund a mission to investigate the site before it could be disturbed. Earth’s government had insisted that the trip be primarily crewed by trained astronauts and engineers, but the University of Washington—last and oldest of the West Coast schools—had managed, along with Oxford College, to put up enough of the funding to insert one of their own people onboard. Gwendolyn Wallace, PhD, with doctorates in archeology, anthropology, and xenocultural studies, a field that had been, thus far, almost entirely in the abstract. Now, six months and millions of miles later, here she was, and the planet was only feet away, and the light on the airlock was red.

  This was not their home. This would never be their home. Gwen knew that, and she was afraid, even as her growing excitement made it harder and harder to hold her ground, to stop herself from reaching for the airlock door and stepping through, ready for the decompression cycle to begin.

  “You know it might be nothing,” said Heather. Her tone was casual. Her posture was anything but. She gave her suit one last tug into position, watching Gwen sidelong. “Sometimes things look like structures from above, and then we get here and find that they were just optical illusions. Rocks and things that aren’t trees but might as well be, creating cascades of shapes and shadows that trick the human eye.”

  “I saw the pictures myself,” said Gwen. “There were arches. Balustrades. Windows. That’s not a trick of the light. That’s a structure, something intentionally built, and I’m going to be the one who documents it. I’m going to be the one who records it for posterity.”

  “Guess you’ve got some passion in you after all,” said Heather.

  Gwen fixed her with a level look. “Anyone who thinks academics are dispassionate has never spent any time with us when we’re in our element. Let me get to that site, and I’ll show you passion.”

  “You’re about to get your wish,” said Heather. “Look.” She gestured to the panel above the airlock. Gwen turned, barely daring to breathe.

  The red light was now flanked by two blue ones. The airlock was ready for human use.

&nb
sp; They were going outside.

  * * *

  Alpha Centauri Bb was the closest Earth-like planet outside humanity’s home solar system. Ironically, that very closeness saw it overlooked for decades. When long-range space travel became possible, it was the gas giants and the dense, mineral-rich planets with no atmosphere to speak of that initially attracted investors. They traveled past the Alpha Centauri system on wings of steel and trails of sparkling propulsion, always swearing that one day they would back up and take a good, long look at their nearest neighbor. Probes had shown that A.C. Bb was a life-bearing world, boasting its own ecosystem that was utterly inimical to humanity’s needs. “There are bacteria that thrive around volcanic vents, without air or food or light,” one scientist had said, shortly after the first sampling probe had returned to Earth. “Maybe they would do well there. But I doubt it.”

  Yes, there was an atmosphere, which could even colloquially be called “air,” since air had no specific characteristics apart from breathability; the fact that the “air” was comprised of neon, helium, and other, more unstable compounds didn’t change what it was. It would be possible for someone to unzip their environment suit and breathe in deeply. They would be dead before they hit the ground. It was still an option.

  There were things that had structures in the ground that could be considered “roots,” and long, load-bearing parts that could be considered “trunks,” and even “leafs” at the top, spreading out to catch the rays of the deep red sun that shone down from above. Things that human eyes would interpret as birds, insects, and small reptiles moved through the foliage, their angles subtly off, their colors blatantly wrong. Looking at them for too long could become painful, as the brain struggled to make them fit a frame of reference that simply didn’t apply.

  Individuals who were suited for the xenosciences were few and far between. Most of the discoveries the universe had to offer would be chronicled and reviewed by computer, turned into abstracts that wouldn’t wound the delicate sensibilities of the human mind. Spacers were generally considered slightly insane. Not for seeking space—the drive to go, to fly, to explore had been part of humanity for as long as people had possessed the capacity to raise their heads and look upward—but as a consequence of all the things they’d been exposed to, the impossible angles, the unbreathable air. Humanity was meant and made for its own solar system, where even the lifeless outer planets made sense. Anything beyond it was too much to understand.

  The airlock door opened. Gwen took her first step out, onto the surface of an alien world. She was all too aware of Heather standing behind her, waiting for her to vomit or collapse from the visual shock of colors her mind didn’t know how to process and shapes that her cultural sensitivities insisted couldn’t possibly exist. Well, she wasn’t going to give the spacer the satisfaction. Breathing slowly, deliberately, she closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  All these things are right and real and true, she told herself sternly. You’ve seen pictures. You’ve seen the surveyor’s reports. You know your eyes are telling you the truth. Listen to them.

  She opened her eyes.

  The landscape was still alien, but not as painfully so: the colors seemed a hair less bright, the shapes of rocks and trees a hint less predatory. She’d been training for over a year to be able to divorce herself from her surroundings and see them for what they were, not for what her animal mind wanted them to be.

  Novelty was always terrifying. In another generation or two, perhaps the children of the human race would live in domed cities on this very world, breathing Earth-standard air and playing with the descendants of the spike-furred creatures that watched them, bemused and wary, from the nearby trees.

  “You all right, professor?” asked Heather.

  Gwen turned, smiling through her face shield. The other woman shied away. Feeling an obscure satisfaction, Gwen said, “I’m perfectly fine. I just had to take a moment to appreciate the unique beauty of this place. Don’t you think it’s amazing?”

  “It’s sure something,” grumbled Heather, moving to stand next to Gwen. “Regulations require that I offer you one more opportunity to turn around. I will film everything I see at the ruin. I will submit my footage to you in its entirety, no editing or omissions. You will be able to fulfill your commitment to the university without endangering yourself. You have my word that I will not attempt to mislead you.”

  Gwen didn’t care for Heather. Spacers, as a whole, were disrespectful cowboys who thought they knew better than the rules and regulations that supposedly dictated their actions: they understood space and the alien worlds it contained better than any petty bureaucrat who’d never stepped foot any further from Earth than the red, safely terraformed soil of Mars. She knew that Heather, and the others back on the ship, chafed at her presence, seeing her as a silently accusing reminder of the rules they would rather not obey. But Heather seemed genuinely concerned. Gwen had mercy on her.

  “I believe you,” she said. “But my school paid to send me this far because they wanted me to see the ruin with my own eyes, not just through recordings. If I did what you’re asking, I’d be in violation of my contract. I could be fired. Worse, I could have my work credentials for Earth revoked. There are very few positions open on the Moon. I don’t want to spend the next ten years in cryogenic suspension while the computer tries to find me a job.”

  Heather hesitated before rolling her eyes, bravado falling back into place like it had never slipped away. “Suit yourself, Professor,” she said. “I was just trying to save you a walk. Come on.” She turned, giving her hips an unnecessary extra swing, and started striding away into the alien landscape.

  Gwen followed, more sedately, trying to study everything around her without looking at any one thing for long enough that it would start to upset her.

  The air, again, presented a problem: some of the more unusual compounds it contained made it more flammable than the air back on Earth, making anything that might produce sparks a terrible idea. They couldn’t take a recon vehicle to the ruins. Any doubts Gwen might have had as to the veracity of that ruling had been destroyed when they had landed, in a storm of fire and ashes created by their propulsion thrusters. The ship rested at the center of a circle of char, all the foliage burnt away in an eight-foot radius around it. The firestorm had been localized but intense; it would be years before anything could grow here again. Maybe decades, depending on the local vegetation. There was so much they didn’t know, so much they couldn’t know.

  Humanity traveled within the safe sphere of its own ideas. Even the least alien of worlds was too different for many—for most—to comprehend. That wasn’t going to change for generations, if it ever changed at all.

  Heather led the way into the brush, the bold explorer clearing the path with her monofilament machete and her practiced eye for danger. Spacers came the closest to fully embracing the unknown, learning the elements of it that were closest to what they expected and using them to sketch the barest, thinnest outline of the worlds around them. They still died in droves—oh, how they died, frozen on worlds of ice, burning forever on worlds of flame, calcified and dissolved and transformed and remade and never, never forgotten—but they counted it a worthwhile sacrifice, for the cause of spreading humanity to the stars.

  Gwen followed as close behind as she dared, holding her arms close against her body, fighting the childish impulse to reach for what looked like a flower, a berry, a piece of ripe and ready fruit. She didn’t want to eat them, stars, no; she wanted to study them, to find the points of commonality between herself and the people who must have lived here once, before time took them away. The people who’d left their ruins for her to find. She was going to be their chronicler, the one who uncovered and told their story. It seemed only right that she should make at least something of an effort to force herself to know them first.

  The ground changed under their feet, gradually taking on a slight gradient, guiding them upward and onward, from the flat plain to the
budding mountain where the ruins were located. Gwen checked her wrist recorder. Every step she took was being captured, ready to replay and analyze at her leisure. She was going to need that footage. This whole world was a mystery to be unraveled, and there were people back at the university counting on her to bring them the keys to begin their own slices of the work. The human mind might not be equipped to understand all the wonders of the universe, but they would die before they stopped trying, collectively and on their own. Nothing mattered more than the attempt.

  Vines—it was impossible to think of them as anything else, not when they were fibrous and green and so clearly growing out of the nearby vegetation—draped across the easiest path up the growing mountain. Heather hacked them aside. They wept bright purple sap that bubbled upon contact with air. Gwen wondered what it would smell like, what the chemical structure would say versus the human nose, which insisted on trying to compare everything it encountered to things that it had known on Earth. Not that she, or any other human, was ever likely to smell these vines; they were too different, too alien. Death would likely follow close on the heels of any attempt to truly know them.

  “How much further?” she asked, voice seeming deeper and more resonant to her ears as it traveled through her suit’s bone conduction speakers. She was hearing herself inside and outside at the same time, as she heard her voice normally and as other people heard it, the two twinned to the point of becoming impossible to separate.

  “Almost there, professor,” said Heather, and kept hacking.

  The only two unprotected people on the face of the planet walked on.

  * * *

  When they reached the ruins, everything changed. One moment they were hacking their way through the brush, Gwen avoiding the vines that sought to catch and cling, Heather swinging her machete with wild abandon, not seeming to care about the damage she might be doing to the structures (plants, insisted Gwen’s mind; they were green and growing and they couldn’t be anything but plants, to be anything else would be wrong) around them. The next moment, they were stepping through the last veil of green and the ruins were there, unfolding before them like a strange geometric puzzle.