Alien Artifacts

by Seanan McGuire

  For one agonizing, aching moment, the angles of the structure were impossible, following no laws of terrestrial mathematics: they bent, soared, folded inward on themselves according to their own ambitions, and Gwen’s eyes refused to translate what they saw into anything more than an abstract jumble of folds and lines. Then she blinked, once, twice, three times, and the structure settled into something that would have looked perfectly at home in the regrown rainforests of Central America. It was a pyramid, stones stacked upon stones, with stairs wending their way up the sides. There were doorways positioned at the base, and again halfway up, but they were blocked by great slabs of black stone that sparkled where the sun hit them, not gold or silver; rainbow, like they were filled with prisms.

  There was an open door at the top of the pyramid. Gwen stood staring at the structure in open-mouthed awe for several moments, taking in the carvings around the openings, mimicking the local foliage in delicate abstraction, marveling at the preservation of the stairways. Finally, she swallowed, pointed to the top, and said, “There.”

  “You sure?” asked Heather dubiously. “We’ve seen seals like those ones before. They give way pretty easily. We could be in and out in under an hour if you’d let me—”

  “No,” said Gwen. The vehemence of her tone surprised even her. The two of them stood staring at each other for a moment before she shook her head and repeated, “No. We have a way to get inside without damaging the structure in any fashion, and that’s what we’re going to do. This stays intact for a change.”

  Heather looked at her silently, a stony expression on her face. Gwen was suddenly, painfully aware of the machete in Heather’s hand, its edge visible only through the sparkle it made when it brushed against the air, cutting the very molecules in two. Monofilament was so thin that it could pass through the cell membrane and out again without leaving a hole. Someone who was cut in two with the stuff might as well not have been touched, until they tried to move, and found themselves falling apart.

  Gwen was unarmed. If Heather truly objected to her demands, all she could do was run, through a jungle made of things that were not trees, hoping to reach the ship before the spacer called ahead and told her friends to stop the archeologist from contacting home.

  Finally, broadly, Heather shrugged. “Whatever, but I’m not carrying you up that damn thing.”

  “You won’t need to,” said Gwen, and grinned.

  * * *

  An hour later, she was wishing she hadn’t been quite so confident. The pyramid, which had looked high but manageable from the edge of the jungle, was misleading: the people who had constructed it had been slightly taller than the human norm, enough so that each step was about four inches higher than was comfortable. Those extra inches added up: they’d been climbing for an hour, and were only two-thirds of the way to the top.

  “We could have been on our way back to the ship by now,” said Heather. “You would still have been the first archeologist to set foot inside one of these things, and I wouldn’t feel like my ass was on fire.”

  “Have you not been keeping up your zero-G exercise program?” asked Gwen.

  Heather flipped her off.

  It was a remarkably soothing, human gesture, something that had traveled with them all the way from Earth, something that wasn’t changed by shifts in gravity or by the strange, alien geometries she still glimpsed out of the corner of her eye whenever she allowed herself to relax. Gwen laughed, and that sound was equally human, bright and free and beautiful. She was climbing a pyramid on an alien planet; she was lightyears from home, on the cusp of what might be the greatest archeological discovery she would ever be in a position to make. Everything was right with the world. Anything else would have been disrespectful to the steps she’d had to take to be here.

  “All you academics are freaks,” grumbled Heather.

  “We say the same about spacers.”

  “Spacers are the only sane people left in the entire human race.”

  Gwen tilted her head. “How so?”

  “All the rest of you, it’s like you’re allergic to the whole universe. It makes you sick to your souls instead of sick to your stomachs, but the theory’s the same. You can’t handle it. It isn’t Earth, it isn’t yours, and it screws you all up inside. Us, we can’t take everything, but we’re better at it than you are, because we’ve been exposed more. We’re teaching ourselves to survive outside our own atmosphere. There are so many people now, we couldn’t all pull back to Earth if we wanted to. There isn’t room. So we spread and we spread and we keep on looking for places to belong. But we’re never going to find them outside of our solar system until we broaden our horizons enough to see them for what they are. You keep preserving humanity’s past. It’s important. Somebody needs to. I’m going to be out here preserving humanity’s future. That’s important too.”

  Gwen was quiet for a moment, absorbing this. Finally, she nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I never thought of it like that.”

  “Damn right I’m right,” grumbled Heather, sounding secretly pleased with herself. They kept walking. Soon enough, they were stepping off the stairway and onto a wide, flat promenade. Perhaps fifteen feet separated them from the entryway. It was all Gwen could do to stay where she was, not allowing herself to bolt for the open door into the future.

  “My God,” she breathed.

  Heather didn’t say anything. The other woman’s tone had been reverent, and while the spacer might consider this a waste of time, it was a waste of time that had funded the mission and was going to lead to a greater profit later on. She could afford a few minutes to let the archeologist enjoy her victory. The pyramid was going to be like all the others, she was sure: filled with antiquities and odd machines that would fetch a pretty penny on the secondary market, but were, in the grand scope of things, worthless. The culture that had created them was gone, and not even its echoes remained.

  Gwen could have told her a few things about the value of culture, living on long after its descendants were gone. She could have told her about the need to remember history, all history, in order to build a strong foundation for the future. She could have told her so many things. She didn’t think they needed to be said. So instead they walked together, the historian and the would-be looter, under the stone archway, into the dark beyond.

  Or into what should have been the dark beyond. As soon as they were past the threshold, the chamber lit up with a soft, whitish glow that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. The floor began to glow as well, brighter, slightly green. Heather and Gwen stopped, staring. They were still staring when a grinding noise began behind them.

  “Shit!” snapped Heather, breaking out of her surprise, grabbing Gwen, and diving for the opening…but the opening wasn’t there anymore. It had been replaced by a solid wall of black stone, glittering with tiny prisms that began to glow even as they watched.

  “Shit,” said Heather. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “It’s all right,” said Gwen. “There are other exits.”

  “Yeah, and they’re all blocked, and do you want to try digging your way out of a big alien mystery pyramid with nothing but a machete? Because I don’t. That is the opposite of what I want.”

  “But it’s what we get to do,” said Gwen. “Please stop yelling. I’m holding onto my calm by the skin of my teeth, and I’d rather not lose it.”

  The light had been getting brighter while they spoke. A warm musical tone started to fill the room, light, melodic, and surprisingly painless, given how much everything else on this planet had hurt when it began. There was a click behind them before a voice said, in flat, genderless English, “Congratulations. You have reached the,” unintelligible, “goal station. Please register your player names and affiliations.”

  Gwen and Heather both turned. A glowing sphere had appeared in the middle of the room; the voice was coming from somewhere inside.

  “Please register your player names and affiliations,” repeated the sphere.
>
  “Uh,” said Heather. “Just so you know, none of the other pyramids have done this. The room at the top was always empty by the time we got there.”

  “You mean after you smashed your way through one of the lower doors.”

  Heather shrugged.

  “This room was empty too, when we first got here.” Gwen eyed the sphere warily, grateful for her recording devices, for the fact that none of this was going to be lost. “Maybe there’s a mechanism that can only be triggered if you enter the pyramid the way that you’re supposed to.”

  “Sorry,” said Heather. She didn’t sound sorry.

  “Please register your player names and affiliations,” repeated the sphere.

  “Dr. Gwendolyn McArthur, University of Washington,” said Gwen. “This is Heather Wilson, of the United North American Marine Corps.”

  There was a pause before the sphere said, “These are not recognized affiliations. Please state your world of origin.”

  “We’re from Earth,” said Heather.

  The sphere pulsed blue for a moment before returning to its neutral greenish-white. “Earth,” it said. “Congratulations. You have reached the,” unintelligible, “goal station ahead of all other players. The move is yours. Do you wish to continue, repeat, recede, or,” unintelligible. There was a questioning note on that last, incomprehensible word; they were being offered a choice.

  “What are you?” asked Gwen.

  “I am the,” unintelligible, “goal station,” said the sphere. “As the first to reach me, you are permitted to select the next play event.”

  “What the fuck?” asked Heather.

  “I think we’ve found some sort of gaming device,” said Gwen slowly. More loudly, she asked, “Can you define the play events?”

  “Continuation will allow you to submit all markers which have been collected since your last goal station, and be judged according to completeness for the sector. Repetition will return you to the start of this goal station leg. Receding will return you to the previous goal station leg.” Unintelligible “will reset the game board.”

  “How about you just open the door and we’ll go?” asked Heather.

  “You cannot leave the goal station until you have chosen a course,” said the sphere.

  “Great.” Heather turned and glared at Gwen. “Just great.”

  “We can choose one. We can do this.”

  “Can we? Because a weird alien ball that speaks English is telling me I have to stay here until I choose something I don’t understand.”

  “Well, hang on.” Gwen looked to the sphere. “Can you tell whether we possess any, uh, markers?”

  “You do not possess any markers at this time. Should you select continuation, you will be removed from play.”

  “The two of us?”

  “Earth.”

  Heather and Gwen exchanged a look. It was Heather who spoke first, asking, “This planet…did the people who used to live here make you?”

  “No. I was placed after they had been removed from play.”

  “Okay, we are not doing that.” Heather frowned. “What was the start of this, uh, leg?”

  “You began this leg when you entered this room.”

  “So we still couldn’t leave.”

  “What was the previous leg?” asked Gwen.

  The sphere’s answer was unintelligible.

  Gwen groaned. “We don’t have a shared vocabulary for planetary names. It could have been any of the worlds where a similar pyramid has been found.”

  “Screw it,” said Heather. “We’ll take the fourth one.”

  The sphere pulsed. “Again?” it asked.

  “What?” Gwen’s eyes narrowed. “Have we chosen the fourth one before?”

  “Every time a member of your team has reached this station, they have chosen,” unintelligible.

  “Guess it’s not hurting anything,” said Heather. “We’ll take it.”

  “Very well. Your team has been credited with locating a standing goal post; the confusion field for all non-home ground will be reduced by six percent. Your sacrifice has been duly noted.”

  “Wait—” began Gwen.

  The sphere flashed white, and everything was gone.

  * * *

  The Nile was high in its banks, threatening to overflow. Crocodiles would be prowling near the edges, looking for something to fill their stomach. It was unwise to wander, this deep into the rainy season. But Sabah couldn’t sleep. Her dreams were filled with the Sun, glowing bright and speaking in foreign tongues to two women in unfamiliar clothing, who stood before it, close enough to touch. It was a strange thing to have within her mind. She needed to see the stars, to shake the strangeness away.

  Sabah rose and padded, quiet as a kitten, to the door to her family home. She looked back only once, to be certain that her parents had not noticed her going.

  The sky outside was a sheet of absolute blackness, shimmering with stars that glinted like grains of white sand glittered in the noonday sun. Sabah stared up at it, wondering if the stars were things that could be touched, wondering if humanity would ever find a way to reach them. The sphere’s words had been strange, meaningless, all save for the last five, which had been spoken in a tongue she knew, if only in her dreams.

  “Return to start of game.”

  About the Authors

  JACEY BEDFORD is a British science fiction and fantasy writer with novels published by DAW in the USA and short stories published on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in an old stone house on the edge of Yorkshire’s Pennine Hills with her songwriter husband and a long-haired, black German Shepherd (a dog not an actual shepherd from Germany). She’s been a librarian, a postmistress, and a folk singer with the vocal harmony trio, Artisan. She once sang live on BBC Radio 4 accompanied by the Doctor (Who?) playing spoons.

  Web: www.jaceybedford.co.uk

  Blog: jaceybedford.wordpress.com/

  Twitter: @jaceybedford

  Facebook www.facebook.com/jacey.bedford.writer

  SOFIE BIRD writes speculative fiction in Melbourne, Australia, and pays the bills as a technical writer, where no one looks at her askance for wanting to know everything. She also programs, weaves, sculpts glass, and maintains a website at http://sofiebird.net. Sofie is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, has published poetry in the Australian periodical Blue Dog, and her fiction has appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and the anthology Temporally Out Of Order by Zombies Need Brains. You can follow her on twitter: @sofie_bird.

  S.C. BUTLER lives in New Hampshire with his wife and son. He is the author of “The Stoneways” trilogy from Tor – Reiffen’s Choice, Queen Ferris, and The Magicians’ Daughter. His short stories have appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and several anthologies, including ZNB’s anthology Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens. Although he hasn’t managed yet, he does hope someday to make it to the other side.

  DANIEL J. DAVIS was born and raised in Massachusetts. A veteran of both the US Marine Corps and the US Army, he currently lives in North Carolina with an amazing wife, two dogs, and an unhealthy love of The History Channel’s Ancient Aliens. His work has previously appeared in Writers of the Future Volume 31 and Urban Fantasy Magazine. He also blogs, somewhat infrequently, at danieljdavisblogs.wordpress.com.

  JENNIFER DUNNE is a data scientist who loves uncovering the underlying patterns and relationships between things that seem unrelated…like Mozart and an alien language. Was his partying and drinking just his era’s version of a bad boy rock and roll lifestyle, or was he self-medicating to stop the “voices” in his head because he was unusually sensitive to certain frequencies? Past novellas speculating on aliens and musicians, although with far more romance than this short story, include Illicit Programming and Must Love Music.

  DAVID FARLAND is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author with dozens of novels to his credit. He has written for Star Wars and the Mummy, but is best known for his “Runelords” fantasy
series. Dave serves as the lead judge for the world’s largest science fiction and

  fantasy writing contest, and has helped numerous writers go on to start their own careers. You can learn more about him or contact him at www.mystorydoctor.com.

  Born in New York City in 1957, CELIA S. FRIEDMAN discovered science fiction at age 12, and has been obsessed with it ever since. Her first novel, In Conquest Born, was published by DAW Books in 1986, and in 1996 she quit her job as a costume designer to write full time in Northern Virginia. To date she has published ten novels (including her acclaimed “Coldfire” Trilogy), short fiction, and an RPG resource. Her most recent work, Dreamweaver, will be released in December 2016. Chat with her on Facebook and check out her web page at www.csfriedman.com. Her glasswork can be found at https://www.etsy.com/shop/glassfantasies

  WALTER H. HUNT is a science fiction and speculative fiction writer from Massachusetts. He is the author of the critically acclaimed “Dark Wing” series, originally published by Tor Books and now in the Baen e-library. He has also written A Song In Stone, a novel of the Templars; Elements of Mind, a Victorian thriller about mesmerism; and, with Eric Flint, 1636: The Cardinal Virtues, part of the New York Times best-selling “Ring of Fire” series. He is married with one daughter, and is Grand Historian of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts. Find out more at http://www.walterhunt.com.